Children's Environmental Health Collaborative

Across the world, children are already facing the harsh realities of climate change and environmental degradation—often with life-changing consequences. The global climate crisis and the pollution of our air, water, and soil are no longer distant threats; they are urgent dangers undermining children’s most fundamental rights: the right to life, to grow up healthy, and to inherit a sustainable planet. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and exposure to toxic chemicals are converging to put millions of young lives at risk. The evidence of this crisis is all around us.

Over the past 50 years, children’s environments and patterns of disease have changed dramatically. Thanks to global health advances, the risk of a child dying before their fifth birthday has dropped by nearly 60 per cent, largely due to reductions in communicable and neonatal diseases. But while progress against infectious diseases has saved millions of young lives, a new threat is rising: noncommunicable diseases increasingly driven by environmental hazards and climate change. Children today face growing risks of chronic conditions like asthma, ADHD, obesity, childhood cancers, and neurodevelopmental disorders linked to toxic chemicals and pollution. These threats are everywhere — urban and rural, in homes and schools — but they hit hardest in low- and middle-income countries, where nearly 92 per cent of pollution-related child deaths occur. The result is a silent but growing crisis—one that spares no child but punishes the most vulnerable most severely.