2. Children and Climate Change: an Overview Children, particularly the most disadvantaged, are acutely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and face heightened and specific risks compared to the wider population as a whole. This can be attributed to three key factors: firstly, that childhood – particularly between birth and the age of five – represents a unique stage of physiological and mental development. As a result, children experience distinct and disproportionate harm from climate-induced changes in their environment, including impacts with potentially lifelong consequences. Secondly, children make up one of the largest groups affected by climate change, as many of the countries identified as most vulnerable to its impacts, such as the Philippines, are also those in which children tend to account for a large share of the overall population. Projected demographic trends are expected to further consolidate this situation. While all children will ultimately suffer from the risks of climate-induced harm, not all children are affected equally. Zones most at risk from disasters and climate change impacts frequently overlap with areas of high poverty, exacerbating inequality and further undermining the ability of poor children to cope and take advantage of opportunities.2 Finally, despite being least responsible for the causes of climate change, it is children and future generations that will bear the heaviest burden of our inadequate action to tackle climate change, since they will live longer, and face more profound, widespread and recurrent crises as the impacts of climate change escalate over time. The Philippines vividly illustrates this convergence of children’s vulnerabilities: the country is consistently ranked among the top five countries most vulnerable to climate change impacts,3 and also has a large child population. Between 1997 and 2016, the Philippines experienced 289 weather-related events, greatly exceeding the number of events experienced by any other top ten most vulnerable country over the same period.4 In 2015, 38 per cent of the population was under the age of 18, and 11 per cent was under the age of 5,5 while the population is expected to grow by a further 1.4 per cent each year between 2015 and 2030.6 Furthermore, the majority of Filipinos live in the immediate vicinity of the coast and other low-lying areas, highly exposed to increasingly intense storms and storm surges, as well as an observed sea level rise that is more than twice the global average.7