The world is failing to protect children from the health dangers posed by climate change and poor diet, a landmark UN report said yesterday, adding that every child is under “immediate threat.”
Not one country on Earth is adequately protecting the next generation from the impacts of carbon emissions, the destruction of nature, and high-calorie and processed foods, more than 40 of the world’s pre-eminent child and adolescent health experts said in the report, commissioned by the WHO and the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund.
Excessive carbon emissions, produced overwhelmingly by wealthier nations, “threaten the future of all children” and would burden them with additional health dangers, from deadly heat waves to the increased spread of tropical diseases, they said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The report also highlights the threat children face from harmful marketing of fat and sugar-laden foods, alcohol and tobacco.
“The big message is that no single country is protecting children’s health today and for their future,” said Anthony Costello, professor of International Child Health and director of the Institute for Global Health at University College London.
“When you look at the damage being done to children’s lungs by air pollution, we’ve got a very limited time to sort this out,” he said.
“We have the solutions, what we don’t have is the political leadership and will to make it happen,” he said.
The report, published in The Lancet medical journal, ranks the performance of 180 countries when it comes to child survival, education and nutrition rates.
Based on these criteria, less-
developed nations, such as the Central African Republic and Chad, perform particularly poorly compared with rich countries, such as Norway and the Netherlands.
However, the rankings are largely reversed when the impacts of air pollution from per capita carbon emissions were assessed.
“The world’s decisionmakers are failing today’s children and youth: failing to protect their health, failing to protect their rights, and failing to protect their planet,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
About 250 million under-fives in low and middle-income countries risk being stunted due to malnutrition and other impacts of poverty, the authors said.
At the same time, the number of obese children worldwide has surged 11-fold since 1975 to 124 million.
Children in some countries see as many as 30,000 advertisements on television in a single year, the report said.
Moreover, despite industry self-regulation, one study showed that children in Australia were exposed 51 million times to alcohol adverts in just one year of televised sport.
“Industry regulation has failed,” Costello said.
“And the reality could be much worse still: We have few figures about the huge expansion of social media advertising and algorithms aimed at our children,” he added.
The authors called on governments to radically reduce carbon emissions in line with the Paris climate goals and to tighten regulation of harmful marketing.
Current emissions pledges put Earth on course to warm more than 3°C by 2100, which “would lead to devastating health consequences for children,” from rising sea levels and heat waves to disease and malnutrition.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia