COP27: addressing loss and damage will provide some protection for children's rights, but failure to address fossil fuels only guarantees further violations

One billion children are already feeling the impacts of the climate crisis, and nothing can compensate for the massive trauma and disruption to children’s lives brought about by climate-related disasters. It is welcome that developed countries have finally stepped up and agreed to the long-standing demands of vulnerable countries to establish a loss and damage fund, sending a signal to children and families on the frontlines that their plight has been recognized, and that they will receive assistance to pick up the pieces when disaster strikes. This fund must now be filled with new and additional finance, and rapidly operationalized.

Developed countries must also deliver on their long-overdue commitment to provide $100 bn a year to developing countries, and to rapidly scale up finance for adaptation in particular, which children facing the climate crisis need so urgently now. 

COP27 saw significant progress in explicitly recognizing the role of children as agents of change, and the need to include them in designing and implementing climate policy and action. If children’s rights, including their right to be heard, were being respected, protected and fulfilled in climate action at all levels, then we would surely not have a situation in which the agreement here in Sharm El-Sheikh failed to address the source of the problem - the burning of all fossil fuels - nor in which fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered representatives of the ten most climate-vulnerable nations by 10:1.

The recognition of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in the COP27 outcome decision is a welcome step forward, and action and support to fulfil this right through urgent climate action that considers children’s specific needs and priorities, must be a priority for governments moving forward, including through implementation of the UNCRC’s forthcoming General Comment No. 26 on child rights and the environment, with a special focus on climate change.