UNICEF says Cambodian children at very high risk of climate change impacts

[geovalin]

Young people living in Cambodia are among those most at risk of the impacts of climate change, threatening their health, education, and protection, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Cambodia said in a press statement on Sunday. Citing the first UNICEF global report on “The Climate Crisis Is a Child Rights Crisis: Introducing the Children’s Climate Risk Index”, the statement said Cambodian children ranked the world’s 46th most vulnerable among 163 countries and regions.

 

The report found Cambodian children are highly exposed to water scarcity, riverine flooding and vector-borne disease, but investments in social services, particularly access to water, sanitation and hygiene, health and nutrition, education and social protection services, can make a significant difference to safeguard their futures from the impacts of climate change.

 

“The climate crisis is a child’s rights crisis because it threatens all aspects of children’s health and wellbeing, on a scale humanity has never experienced before,” said Foroogh Foyouzat, UNICEF representative in Cambodia.

 

read more https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50921062/unicef-says-cambodian-children-at-very-high-risk-of-climate-change-impacts/

[VincentRJ]

It's so sad that governments seem unable to learn from history. Cambodia is one of the few countries that has a recent history, just a few centuries ago, of a total collapse of a great and magnificent civilization caused mainly by natural climate change.

 

Around the same time that the Medieval Warm Period in Europe was transitioning to the Little Ice Age, the great Khmer civilization was experiencing 'unprecedented' droughts and floods. For several decades, the monsoons never arrived, and masses of people began leaving the area in order to survive, including members of the 'upper class'.

 

When the droughts were followed by unprecedented flooding, yet more people fled to other parts of Cambodia, probably Phnom Penh. There's archaeological evidence that those who remained tried to control the flooding by dismantling certain temples in order to use the stone blocks to construct more dams.

 

It was then the Thais invaded, which was the final nail in the coffin.

 

The message here is that governments should prepare for a repetition of abrupt changes in climate that have occurred in the past, instead of fooling the population that any changes in climate are due to CO2 emissions, and that such changes can be prevented by reducing CO2 emissions. ????