Environment
If the world is a child's playground, we should be worried. After all, landfills, sewage drains, polluted rivers, and the outskirts of a chemical plant are not places for children. And yet, millions of children are increasingly forced to live, work, and play in areas that pose environmental health risks.
Environmental degradation both creates child poverty and intensifies it. In the 21st Century, new and grave environmental problems are affecting populations around the globe: climate change, the loss of the ozone layer, pollution, desertification, deforestation, dwindling biological diversity, and the creation and subsequent dumping of hazardous waste and chemicals. Combined with other problems - AIDS, malnutrition - environmental degradation and the health risks they pose can ensure that children are shackled to poverty.
The ramifications of environmental degradation for children are difficult to measure, but serious. Children are disproportionately vulnerable to environmental problems by their innately curious disposition, early hand-mouth tendencies, exposure to the outdoors through work and play and their susceptibility to disease. Air pollution, for instance, affects children more intensely because they inhale more pollutants per pound of body weight.
In fact, rates of asthma in children have skyrocketed and asthma attacks send many frightened children to the hospital every day. Families living in poverty are unable to afford medication to treat conditions such as asthma and many children live their childhood wheezing and worried about the next attack. As air pollution continues to increase and as the world's cities are covered with thick smog, more and more children will be struggling to breathe.
The rate of urbanization is high as millions of people must abandon their traditional ways of life to seek work in cities. Millions of children live on or under five miles from a toxic waste dump. Children who work in agriculture are exposed to pesticides and children who work in factories or workshops are exposed to chemicals and toxins. The health risks associated with exposure to chemicals, pollutants and toxins include leukemia, cancer, development defects, and mental retardation.
The following are scenarios of how environmental degradation puts children directly in harm's way:
- A child whose family has traditionally herded animals can no longer find green pastures and must move to a slum with no sewage system;
- Wood used for heating and cooking becomes sparse and a child must walk further in increasingly harsh weather conditions to find kindling;
- A company secretly dumps toxic waste into a river where a child bathes; and,
- A mangrove is deforested and a child's village is pummeled by a hurricane because of the lack of natural coastal protection.
The most frustrating aspect of environmental degradation is that the people who do the least harm - children - suffer the most. And children who live in poverty can be victimized by environmental crimes much easier. A government would never dump several tons of radioactive waste into the living room of a wealthy family. Poor children and their families, however, are less able to protest environmental crimes, or even know that they are happening.
Ensuring that all children, regardless of income, are protected from environmental health risks is one of the first steps toward ending extreme poverty.
Environment Pages