Children and Heatwaves
New Report Highlights Growing Heat Risks to Children’s Health and Education
The publication of a shocking new report from Save the Children last month stunned many environmentalists, shining light on a growing public health and educational crisis for our children, as rising temperatures again put society’s most vulnerable at the greatest risk. Read on to find out more.
Last month, the international charity Save the Children published the findings of a piece of research into how extreme heat is impacting children and infants around the world. The report, entitled Extreme Heat and Children’s Health and Wellbeing, goes into depth around how a growing number of children are suffering the vicissitudes of heatwaves and provides a series of policy recommendations for international decision makers to consider.
Through mapping the global distribution and intensity of heatwaves that struck the 12 months following June 2023, the team of authors, led by Shruti Agarwal, revealed that over 766 million children had been affected by extremes of heat over this period, or one-third of the global child population. The data presented also showed that the number of children experiencing extreme heat doubled between 2022/23 and 2023/24.
For many, the growth in the number of children affected should come as no surprise. Over the past two years, a number of news stories have been published highlighting what seems like an acceleration in global warming, whether this be how 2023 was the hottest year in recorded history, how several countries - including Egypt, Ghana, and Costa Rica - have broken all-time temperature records this year, or how at least 1,300 died during the hajj pilgrimage heatwave this year.
Now, it is projected that 2024 will take the lead as the hottest year on record.
Whilst the impacts of extreme heat are relatively well known - ranging from simple reductions in economic productivity at one end of the spectrum, to life-threatening heat stroke at the other - the report here went to lengths to show that the impacts on children specifically are highly nuanced and complex.
Overheating - Are Children More at Risk?
As a general rule of thumb, children and infants are at the greatest risk of overheating and heat-related illness across all age groups, owing to a combination of biological and behavioural factors.
From a physiological perspective, children are less able to regulate their internal body temperature than adults. This is largely as a result of a higher metabolism - due to the energy demands of growing - meaning that the rate at which they generate body heat is equally much greater. This and a reduced ability to sweat, it’s clear that children both gain heat more rapidly and lose it less efficiently, making them doubly vulnerable to extremes of heat.
Children are also less able to control their heat exposure - for those very young, including under the age of 3, they are physically unable to move out of direct sunlight and into a shaded area without help, meaning they are dependent on their caregivers to keep cool. Furthermore, children and adolescents tend to have a higher level of activity and are less able to judge when they should avoid such heat-generating activities, putting them at greater risk of overexertion.
The health impacts of this can be grave. According to the Save the Children report, heatwaves have been directly implicated in a number of health-related issues, including stillbirths, exacerbation of underlying conditions such as asthma, deteriorating mental health, and increased cardiovascular issues, including mortality due to heart failure. And this is a challenge that’s only likely to grow as the climate crisis deepens, with research from this year demonstrating that approximately 32% of heat-related neonatal deaths are attributable to climate change.
Summary of health consequences for children as a result of extreme heat. Source: Save the Children Report (2024)
But it would only give a fragment of the whole picture, were we to only consider just the health issues amongst children associated with heatwaves.
As outlined in the report, the effects of overheating can extend well beyond the purely physiological, impacting the lived experiences and overall wellbeing of children. Nutritional security is one aspect of this, whereby variations in the weather can cause drought, overwhelm irrigation systems, and ultimately lead to reductions in crop yields. Food is also more likely to spoil in high heat. The knock-on effects on food availability and, by extension, food prices can be huge, leading to diminished earnings for local farmers, and starvation and malnutrition for consumers. The report points to figures showing that the heatwaves of 2023 in Europe likely added 0.67% to food price inflation.
However, there is one aspect of a child’s life that has the greatest potential for being impacted long term by changes in summer temperatures, which could have far-reaching consequences across their lives. And that is in their education.
Get Out of the Classroom
With summer temperatures seemingly being broken each year, school closures due to extreme heat are on the rise, thereby disrupting children’s ability to access quality education. These impacts, as the report notes, are also much more likely to impact children from more socioeconomically deprived backgrounds, not only as their schools are likely of a lower standard, but because these households will be less likely to have the reliable internet connection needed to transition to remote learning.
The example the report gave was that of South and Southeast Asia throughout much of 2024, where record-breaking heatwaves forced thousands of schools across the region to close, keeping millions of children out of school for weeks. One of the worst-affected countries was Bangladesh, which suffered record 42ºC heatwaves back in April of this year, much higher than the annual average, forcing all schools across the country to close and impacted the education of all 33 million Bangladeshi children. Alongside school closures, persistently high heat can impact a child’s ability to concentrate.
The primary concern, therefore, is that as the climate warms and countries struggle to play catch up in terms of mitigation and adaptation, the potential for the quality of education future generations receive appears threatened.
Whilst the report itself did not refer specifically to the situation in the United Kingdom, it is important to highlight that these impacts are already being felt here. Over the past 3 years, the UK has itself suffered multiple bouts of extreme heat, in some instances surpassing 40ºC. During these periods, schools often closed their doors entirely in order to protect staff and students from the worst of its effects.
New research has also emerged demonstrating the vulnerability of schools across the country. This study by the Met Office, published in Climate Risk Management, assessed the risk of overheating in 20,000 schools across the UK, using data regarding location, the type of building design, and the local climate. By modelling the impacts on schools under the hypothetical 2ºC and 4ºC warming scenarios, they determined the number of days each school would suffer over the “comfortable” threshold of 26ºC and the 35ºC threshold, after which “important health impacts” are seen.
Their main finding was that, under the 2ºC warming scenario, there could be over 15 school days surpassing 35ºC annually for the most at-risk schools. However, all schools will see higher levels of extreme heat and, with there currently being no legal maximum temperatures at which schools must close, it is not understood how schools will cope with such extremes in future.
On top of this, the authors analysed the factors that are most likely to contribute to overheating within schools. For instance, they found that, due to local climatic conditions and the urban heat island (UHI) effect, schools in the South and East of England, particularly in London, are the most susceptible to extreme heat. Furthermore, they found that new-build schools are more susceptible, owing to their greater degree of insulation and lower ceilings trapping heat. This highlights the growing need to adapt school infrastructure for a changing climate.
Shade the UK Recommendations
Being essentially a policy document, the Save the Children report outlined a number of key recommendations for politicians and decision makers around the world to help safeguard the next generation. Such suggestions included underscoring the need to transition away from fossil fuel-based economies, with particular reference to the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) each country must submit under the terms of the Paris Agreement 2015 being more ambitious this year. Alongside this, they gave high-level recommendations around creating child-centred climate services, measuring success with child-centred outcomes, and strengthening social protection measures to mitigate heatwave impacts.
However, we recognise that these recommendations from a multinational organisation will need to be tailored according to the region under the consideration. Hence, for the UK specifically, we at Shade the UK would provide the following policy proposals for protecting British children:
Provide Legal Working Limits: There is currently no internal classroom temperature at which schools must legally close. In the absence of climate adaptation protocols in schools, a legal upper limit must be instituted to protect pupils and staff alike.
Update Building Guidance for Schools: To combat the growing problem of schools with low climate resilience, it must be mandated that all new school buildings are constructed with the principles of adaptive cooling and ventilation in mind.
Retrofitting Existing Buildings: The government must institute a programme of retrofitting existing school buildings so as to be more resilient to extremes of heat. If school infrastructure cannot be easily adapted, alternative premises must be available during summer months.
Educational Heat Action Plans: Local policymakers should work with educational institutions to develop contingency plans for when extreme heat strikes. This could comprise distributing water to students, providing cooling stations, sending children home, or moving to different premises.
Heat Mitigation Training for School Staff: In the absence of true climate adaptation, all teachers and school staff should be trained in the principles of how to keep a classroom cool, including keeping blinds closed during the hottest periods of the day, and understand first aid for treating heat-related illness.
To read more about our work and services, please contact us at info@shadetheuk.co.uk.
