“The face of climate change is a child under the age of 5.” When Dr. Kristie L. Ebi said this at a brown bag lunch discussion in my office earlier this week, you could hear her words land like a ton of bricks.
Children, especially those living in tropic and sub tropic regions like Sub Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, are most vulnerable to the increasing consequences of global warming.
According Ebi’s research, because of their size and dependence on caregivers they are more threatened by natural disasters such as floods, droughts, and heat waves. In addition, global warming increases the incidence of malaria, dengue fever, and diarrheal diseases. Right now, these preventable illnesses prey on communities with little access to clean water, mosquito nets, medical care, and education – and children are among the hardest hit. In 2007 alone, about one out of four children who died before they reached their fifth birthday were combating a diarrheal disease or malaria.
We take these sorts of statistics for granted in this country. Or, at least, I do. Sometimes I feel like climate change is so real an issue, so scary in its potential and current impacts, it’s easier to block it out than deal with it. Dealing with it means, in some ways, changing our lifestyles. But it also means extending support to the most vulnerable communities, who had nothing to do with creating the problem to begin with.
This is not about laying blame at the feet of industrialized countries and their citizens. It’s about taking responsibility. By taking action, we can do more than change the statistics. We can save lives.For more information on how to help poor communities become stronger in the face of climate change, please visit www.oxfamamerica.org/climate.