Why do children need to be put at the centre of climate change policy?

Climate change is the single greatest threat to health, with consequences that span many generations.

As the impacts of climate change intensify, from heatwaves and wildfires to floods and drought, children are bearing disproportionate burdens on their health and well-being. Children who were aged 10 or younger in 2020 will live in a much hotter world than their grandparents born in the 1960s: under a 1.5°C warming scenario, 52% will face unprecedented lifetime exposure to heatwaves. Climate disasters have also disrupted the education of nearly 40 million children each year by destroying schools or causing illnesses that keep children out of school. More children are realising how profoundly climate change affects their right to health, education, and a safe environment, leading to multiple negative emotions often described as climate anxiety.

Nearly 1 billion children are already living in countries severely affected by climate change. Decades of hard-won progress in child health, nutrition, and development now face a grave risk of being reversed if this is not addressed. As the 30th UN Climate Conference (COP30) unfolds in Belem, the message is clear: we need bold emission reductions and meaningful adaptation investments now to safeguard the health and well-being of current young generations.

The first global initiative to embed children’s health in climate policy and response

The Children and Climate Initiative was founded on this imperative: to generate, for the first time, actionable evidence on the impacts of climate change on early childhood development, and to translate that evidence into policies and programs that protect children worldwide. The initiative, based here at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, brings together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to bridge the gap between data and decision-making. The Initiative aims to demonstrate in real time how rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and environmental degradation influence children’s cognitive, emotional, and physical development.

My involvement with the Initiative has been deeply meaningful. Having spent nearly a decade working at the intersection of health and climate change, climate policy, and multilateral processes, I have witnessed first-hand how children’s needs are often marginalised in global climate negotiations. This project is here to change this by creating a space where science, governance and intergenerational justice converge to reimagine how climate policy can serve the youngest and most vulnerable. It is not simply a research Initiative, but an act of moral and institutional imagination, seeking to embed children’s wellbeing and mental health within the core of climate action.

Putting children’s health in the Belém Health Action Plan

As a Master of Public Policy student at the Blavatnik School, I had the exceptional opportunity to support the Children and Climate Initiative and contribute to shaping its strategic policy engagement with the global climate negotiations, particularly the Belém Health Action Plan under Brazil’s COP30 presidency. The Plan is an influential turning point for a targeted and action-oriented approach to health policy in the face of climate change, following up on the first-ever Ministerial declaration on climate and health endorsed by 151 countries during COP28 in the UAE. The action plan was launched in the Pre-COP Climate and Health Conference in Brasilia in July 2025, where I represented the Initiative in the multisectoral discussions. Through these we were able to provide structured, evidence-based feedback to the Brazilian Ministry of Health team, ensuring that the plan recognises the health impacts of climate change on children and adolescents, and integrates early childhood development as a critical lens for climate resilience. Our feedback was successfully integrated in the Action Plan and our Initiative joined the COP30 Activation Group as an implementation partner.

The final plan now states that climate change is “placing significant strain on health systems worldwide and disproportionately affecting developing countries and populations in situations of vulnerability” and calls for countries to develop evidence-based policies that “protect the health, nutrition, hydration, and psychosocial well-being of children and adolescents” in educational settings and across broader climate and health adaptation efforts.

What I took from the experience

Standing before global leaders, I could not help but reflect on my own journey, from being appointed the first Youth Envoy to the COP27 Presidency in Egypt to serving as Health Envoy for COP28 in the United Arab Emirates. Those experiences shaped my understanding of how youth voices can influence the climate and health policy agenda. As Youth Envoy, I worked to ensure that young people were recognised not as symbolic tokens but as equal stakeholders who should be meaningfully engaged. I saw how the inclusion of youth perspectives brought moral clarity and urgency to negotiations, and how health served as a universal language that bridged political divides and underpinned the need for action on climate change.

The transition from the COP spaces to the Blavatnik School of Government and back again has been intellectually transformative. The MPP program has provided me with the analytical tools to analyse complex policy problems and the methodological rigour to design solutions that are both evidence-based and politically feasible. Through courses in governance, economics, and philosophy, I have learned to think systematically about how institutions shape outcomes and how power, incentives, and norms influence decision-making. The MPP has allowed me to place my field experience within a conceptual framework, understanding, for example, how long-term problems like climate change require governance mechanisms that extend political time horizons, as Professor Thomas Hale so insightfully describes.

The MPP experience also reinforced the value of interdisciplinary collaboration. Working alongside colleagues from diverse professional and cultural backgrounds has deepened my appreciation of how climate and health policy must be co-produced by multiple sectors and disciplines. It has taught me that designing policies for children’s health in a warming world requires not only epidemiological data and economic analysis, but also political engagement, empathy, and institutional design. Meeting Professor Alan Stein through the school was a pivotal moment that brought these lessons to life. His vision for the Initiative, rooted in rigorous science and moral conviction, resonated deeply with my belief that policy should be grounded in care, particularly for those least able to advocate for themselves.

The experience of contributing to the Belém Health Action Plan highlighted how research initiatives like the Children and Climate Initiative can serve as knowledge brokers between academia and global policy. We worked to ensure that the evidence on child mental health was not merely included as a thematic concern, but framed as a measurable, financed, and implementable priority.

I believe that the Children and Climate Initiative is not merely a research platform but a catalyst for global transformation. It represents a shift from reactive to preventive policy, from fragmented interventions to systemic resilience. My own journey, from COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh to Oxford, from global negotiations to institutional design, has been one of continuity in purpose: to ensure that climate action is measured not only in carbon reductions, but in lives saved and futures secured.