Ahead of the upcoming 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, leading government figures have pledged to make climate-related policies more responsive to children, acknowledging their unique vulnerabilities and growing anxieties over climate change.
These calls come amid efforts to improve the country’s current state of climate policies, including its nationally determined contribution (NDC) plans, which are climate action plans to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts.
A 2022 Unicef report had classified the Philippine NDC as a Category C plan, meaning there was little to no children-related policies integrated in it, despite being a high risk country to climate change.
Children face unique vulnerabilities to the impacts of climate change, which has triggered stronger and more frequent typhoons and droughts. Millions are often displaced from their homes during these natural disasters, while many are forced to halt their schooling, said Unicef country representative Oyunsaikhan Dendevnorov.
Filipino children have also been ranked as the most affected by “ecoanxiety,” defined as chronic fears about environmental doom.
This year, the COP28 delegates led by Deputy Finance Luwalhati Tiuseco said they would do their best to make sure that children-centered concerns are represented in the upcoming negotiations especially for loss and damages and climate financing. They are also currently accepting plans and proposals on the inclusion of the children’s agenda in the negotiations.
For most adults, children’s anxieties may seem a bit extreme and irrational because of their lack of worldliness, but it is usually never unfounded. They worry because of our lack of action, twisted sense of priorities, and the poor leadership when it comes to addressing their valid concerns for the future of this planet that they are the ones who will have to face, especially after we fail them.
Listening to the children’s concerns shouldn’t be difficult, because those are problems that we should already be dealing with right now. We just need to face it with a sense of urgency, along with the knowledge that we are passing this planet and whatever problems it is facing, to our own children. And that should be enough reason to do more and better to console and comfort them that the adults are trying their best to leave them a better world, and not more problems for them to face.*
