SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
A new report from a World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and The Lancet commission calls for a new child-centric movement to address the climate and ecological crisis and exploitative marketing that are threatening the world's children. (Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Damning New Report Says Every Nation Undermining Children's Hopes for a Livable Planet
Children's "collective concerns must now be heard, and effective actions taken to prevent the next generation inheriting an irreversibly damaged planet."
Feb 18, 2020
A major new report released Wednesday says every nation on the planet is failing children because of the threats to their health and wellbeing from the climate and ecological crises and commercial exploitation.
The damming assessment comes from 40 global child and adolescent health experts in "A Future for the World's Children?" The expert commission was convened by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.
"This report shows that the world's decision makers are, too often, failing today's children and youth: failing to protect their health, failing to protect their rights, and failing to protect their planet," said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who urged nations to seize the publication as a "wake-up call."
The climate crisis is already unleashing harmful impacts on children around the world, the report notes, and, thanks to the global community's failure to act with the ambition science requires, those impacts are set to worsen. "Under widely used business-as-usual scenarios, there is a 93% chance that global warming will exceed 4degC by the year 2100," says the report.
Runaway warming threatens "devastating health consequences," the report adds, as a result of "disruption of water and ecosystems, rising ocean levels, inundation of coastal cities and small island nations, increased mortality from heatwaves, proliferation of vector-borne disease, and a crisis of malnutrition because of disruption to food production systems."
But it's not only climate crisis undermining children's hopes for a livable planet.
As commission co-chair and former Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark, explained, children are under a "commercial assault," which she linked to the obesity epidemic and poor health outcomes.
Children "are targeted by those who promote sugary drinks, fatty foods, so much salt--from the whole obesogenic environment," said Clark.
"Children worldwide are also highly exposed to advertising for products nominally for use by adults only, such as alcohol, tobacco and e-cigarettes," the report says, and are victims of "insidious advertising which encourages formula feeding" over breastfeeding. Children's data and their images are also being exploited.
And industry self-regulation just won't work, the report adds.
The commission provides the public with an interactive tool to see how individual countries fare on supporting a healthy childhood. The tool includes a "flourishing" ranking, which measures factors like children's health, nutrition, and education. By that assessment, the United States is ranked 39 out of 180 countries.
In terms of "Excess CO2 emissions relative to 2030 targets," the U.S. is at 500%. But the country is far from alone in failing in that area--the publication notes that "wealthier countries threaten the future of all children through excessive carbon emissions. "
The commission recommends the following solutions to the crisis, as noted in a press statement:
- Stop CO2 emissions with the utmost urgency, to ensure children have a future on this planet;
- Place children and adolescents at the centre of our efforts to achieve sustainable development;
- New policies and investment in all sectors to work towards child health and rights;
- Incorporate children's voices into policy decisions;
- Tighten national regulation of harmful commercial marketing, supported by a new Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The U.S. is the sole U.N. country not to have ratified that treaty.
"From the climate crisis to obesity and harmful commercial marketing, children around the world are having to contend with threats that were unimaginable just a few generations ago," said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF executive director. "It is time for a rethink on child health, one which places children at the top of every government's development agenda and puts their well-being above all considerations."
As a companion editorial at The Lancet stresses, the time to act is now.
"The power of children's voices has emerged over the past two years as a source of hope," reads the editorial. "Their collective concerns must now be heard, and effective actions taken to prevent the next generation inheriting an irreversibly damaged planet."
"There can be no excuses," it states, "and no time to lose."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
A major new report released Wednesday says every nation on the planet is failing children because of the threats to their health and wellbeing from the climate and ecological crises and commercial exploitation.
The damming assessment comes from 40 global child and adolescent health experts in "A Future for the World's Children?" The expert commission was convened by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.
"This report shows that the world's decision makers are, too often, failing today's children and youth: failing to protect their health, failing to protect their rights, and failing to protect their planet," said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who urged nations to seize the publication as a "wake-up call."
The climate crisis is already unleashing harmful impacts on children around the world, the report notes, and, thanks to the global community's failure to act with the ambition science requires, those impacts are set to worsen. "Under widely used business-as-usual scenarios, there is a 93% chance that global warming will exceed 4degC by the year 2100," says the report.
Runaway warming threatens "devastating health consequences," the report adds, as a result of "disruption of water and ecosystems, rising ocean levels, inundation of coastal cities and small island nations, increased mortality from heatwaves, proliferation of vector-borne disease, and a crisis of malnutrition because of disruption to food production systems."
But it's not only climate crisis undermining children's hopes for a livable planet.
As commission co-chair and former Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark, explained, children are under a "commercial assault," which she linked to the obesity epidemic and poor health outcomes.
Children "are targeted by those who promote sugary drinks, fatty foods, so much salt--from the whole obesogenic environment," said Clark.
"Children worldwide are also highly exposed to advertising for products nominally for use by adults only, such as alcohol, tobacco and e-cigarettes," the report says, and are victims of "insidious advertising which encourages formula feeding" over breastfeeding. Children's data and their images are also being exploited.
And industry self-regulation just won't work, the report adds.
The commission provides the public with an interactive tool to see how individual countries fare on supporting a healthy childhood. The tool includes a "flourishing" ranking, which measures factors like children's health, nutrition, and education. By that assessment, the United States is ranked 39 out of 180 countries.
In terms of "Excess CO2 emissions relative to 2030 targets," the U.S. is at 500%. But the country is far from alone in failing in that area--the publication notes that "wealthier countries threaten the future of all children through excessive carbon emissions. "
The commission recommends the following solutions to the crisis, as noted in a press statement:
- Stop CO2 emissions with the utmost urgency, to ensure children have a future on this planet;
- Place children and adolescents at the centre of our efforts to achieve sustainable development;
- New policies and investment in all sectors to work towards child health and rights;
- Incorporate children's voices into policy decisions;
- Tighten national regulation of harmful commercial marketing, supported by a new Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The U.S. is the sole U.N. country not to have ratified that treaty.
"From the climate crisis to obesity and harmful commercial marketing, children around the world are having to contend with threats that were unimaginable just a few generations ago," said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF executive director. "It is time for a rethink on child health, one which places children at the top of every government's development agenda and puts their well-being above all considerations."
As a companion editorial at The Lancet stresses, the time to act is now.
"The power of children's voices has emerged over the past two years as a source of hope," reads the editorial. "Their collective concerns must now be heard, and effective actions taken to prevent the next generation inheriting an irreversibly damaged planet."
"There can be no excuses," it states, "and no time to lose."
A major new report released Wednesday says every nation on the planet is failing children because of the threats to their health and wellbeing from the climate and ecological crises and commercial exploitation.
The damming assessment comes from 40 global child and adolescent health experts in "A Future for the World's Children?" The expert commission was convened by the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.
"This report shows that the world's decision makers are, too often, failing today's children and youth: failing to protect their health, failing to protect their rights, and failing to protect their planet," said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who urged nations to seize the publication as a "wake-up call."
The climate crisis is already unleashing harmful impacts on children around the world, the report notes, and, thanks to the global community's failure to act with the ambition science requires, those impacts are set to worsen. "Under widely used business-as-usual scenarios, there is a 93% chance that global warming will exceed 4degC by the year 2100," says the report.
Runaway warming threatens "devastating health consequences," the report adds, as a result of "disruption of water and ecosystems, rising ocean levels, inundation of coastal cities and small island nations, increased mortality from heatwaves, proliferation of vector-borne disease, and a crisis of malnutrition because of disruption to food production systems."
But it's not only climate crisis undermining children's hopes for a livable planet.
As commission co-chair and former Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark, explained, children are under a "commercial assault," which she linked to the obesity epidemic and poor health outcomes.
Children "are targeted by those who promote sugary drinks, fatty foods, so much salt--from the whole obesogenic environment," said Clark.
"Children worldwide are also highly exposed to advertising for products nominally for use by adults only, such as alcohol, tobacco and e-cigarettes," the report says, and are victims of "insidious advertising which encourages formula feeding" over breastfeeding. Children's data and their images are also being exploited.
And industry self-regulation just won't work, the report adds.
The commission provides the public with an interactive tool to see how individual countries fare on supporting a healthy childhood. The tool includes a "flourishing" ranking, which measures factors like children's health, nutrition, and education. By that assessment, the United States is ranked 39 out of 180 countries.
In terms of "Excess CO2 emissions relative to 2030 targets," the U.S. is at 500%. But the country is far from alone in failing in that area--the publication notes that "wealthier countries threaten the future of all children through excessive carbon emissions. "
The commission recommends the following solutions to the crisis, as noted in a press statement:
- Stop CO2 emissions with the utmost urgency, to ensure children have a future on this planet;
- Place children and adolescents at the centre of our efforts to achieve sustainable development;
- New policies and investment in all sectors to work towards child health and rights;
- Incorporate children's voices into policy decisions;
- Tighten national regulation of harmful commercial marketing, supported by a new Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The U.S. is the sole U.N. country not to have ratified that treaty.
"From the climate crisis to obesity and harmful commercial marketing, children around the world are having to contend with threats that were unimaginable just a few generations ago," said Henrietta Fore, UNICEF executive director. "It is time for a rethink on child health, one which places children at the top of every government's development agenda and puts their well-being above all considerations."
As a companion editorial at The Lancet stresses, the time to act is now.
"The power of children's voices has emerged over the past two years as a source of hope," reads the editorial. "Their collective concerns must now be heard, and effective actions taken to prevent the next generation inheriting an irreversibly damaged planet."
"There can be no excuses," it states, "and no time to lose."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.