Paint4Planet - Children Call for Action

When looking for, and reading about, climate change (and how this can affect future generations) I came accross the initiative "International Children's Painting Competition - Paint for the Planet".

While we may be ready to colonise other planets, children continue to fall prey to climate-related disasters. According to a 2007 environment report from the UK, approximately 175 million children will be affected by natural disasters induced by climate change over the next decade. This is 50 million more than the past 10 years.


Children are hoping that adults might help with the solution to combat climate change. Young artists from around the world have lent their voice to the message through the 'Paint for the Planet' event. Youngsters sent in 200,000 entries to the recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)initiative.

On October 25th 2008, a selection of the winning paintings from the collection was auctioned out at the Harvard Club of New York City, to raise emergency funds for children affected by climate-related disasters. A statement from UNEP said that the proceeds would go to Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund. Prior to that, on October 23, an exhibition featuring more of the original artworks from the competition was opened to the world, at the UN headquarters in New York. The event 'Paint for the Planet' consisted of the exhibition and the auction.

After New York, the exhibition has been travelling around the world, with a final stop being the climate change talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009.

Here are some key facts about children and climate change:

More than 46% of the world's population is now younger than 25 years old.

Approximately 175 million children will be affected by natural disasters induced by climate change, over the next decade. This is 50 million more than during the ten years to 2005.

Children are more likely than adults to perish during natural disasters or succumb to malnutrition, injuries or disease in their aftermath. Over 96% of all disaster-related deaths worldwide in recent years have occurred in developing countries.

Women and children account for more than 75% of displaced people following natural disasters. For instance, during the July 2007 floods in Bangladesh, 4.2 million children were affected, 300,000 of them under the age of five.

An estimated 650,000 people, of which 300,000 children, were affected by the back-to-back hurricanes in Haiti in 2008.

Factors that play a role in climate change, such as emissions from vehicles and factories, significantly harm children's health. Deaths from asthma, which is the most common chronic disease among children, are expected to increase by nearly 20% by 2016 unless urgent action is taken. Smoke in the home leads to the deaths of nearly 800,000 children each year.

Nearly 10 million children under the age of five die every year of largely preventable diseases. Malaria – which currently claims the lives of around 800,000 children every year – is sensitive to changes in temperature and rainfall and could become more common if weather patterns change.

In a 6-year study from Peru, researchers found an 8% increase in hospitalizations for diarrhea with every degree centigrade increase above the normal average temperature.

Every child will have safe water in the UK, but only 1 in 3 children in Ethiopia will. By 2020, it is projected that some 75-250 million people in Africa will be exposed to increased water stress due to climate change. Forty-four percent of the continent's population is under the age of fifteen.

Developing countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America are forecast to see reductions in agricultural productivity of between 5 and 25% by 2080s due to climate change. In 2006, 1.6 million children under the age of five required major humanitarian assistance in drought-stricken areas of the Horn of Africa.

The number of children dying each year due to the effects of malnutrition – currently 3.5 million – is likely to increase as a result of climate change.

Climate change could cause an additional 40,000 to 160,000 child deaths per year in South Asia and sub- Saharan Africa through GDP losses alone by 2100.

Climate change can also have a significant impact on a child's ability to attend school. For instance, during the July 2007 floods in Sudan, nearly 200 schools were damaged, affecting nearly 45,000 children.

A survey conducted in 2005 by the UK Government found that 24% of the 1,000 10 to 18 year olds questioned believed climate change presented the greatest threat to the world's future.