According to a new report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), entitled « Places and Spaces: Environments and children’s well-being », the majority of rich countries create deleterious and dangerous living conditions for children around the world.
The report published by the UNICEF Innocenti Research Center analyzes the extent to which 39 countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) provide children with a healthy living environment, based on a whole series of indicators such as access to light, green spaces and safe roads, exposure to harmful polluting substances (air pollution, pesticides, humidity in the home, lead); and countries’ contributions to the climate crisis, resource consumption and generation of waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE).
According to this report, if each individual on the globe lived like an inhabitant of the countries studied, it would take more than 3 planets to cover all the needs of humanity. And if everyone consumed resources at the rate of a Canadian, a Luxembourger or an American, this figure would rise to 5!
In terms of CO2 emissions, e-waste and overall resource consumption per capita, some of the world’s wealthiest countries such as Australia, Belgium, Canada and the United States have an immense impact on the global environment, and otherwise rank low on ensuring a healthy environment for children living on their own soil.
UNICEF calls in this report to take certain measures to protect and improve the environment of children. For the UN agency, national, regional and local governments must play a leading role by working today to reduce the production of waste as well as air and water pollution, while ensuring the quality of housing and neighborhoods. Governments and decision-makers must ensure that children’s needs are integrated into decision-making processes, improving the environment for the most vulnerable children and ensuring that environmental policies take children into account.