In 2024, one in seven children around the world had to miss school for prolonged periods owing to climate change-induced extreme weather events like heavy rain, floods, heat waves and so on, according to a UNICEF report. About 54.7 million of these children were from India alone. Worse, in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, flooding des­troyed hundreds of schools, leading to long-term learning losses and school drop-outs. Missing school has the potential of starting a vicious cycle: research by Stanford University shows that learning losses as children are directly proportional to scepticism about climate change in adulthood. Education is not the only phenomenon that is affected by climate change. A report by the United Nations Population Fund revealed a similar link between worsening weather and child marriages — financial loss caused by extreme weather prompts people to marry off girls earlier, which, in turn, causes an uptick in maternal and neonatal mortality. Climate change can also significantly impact language by causing the endangerment and potential loss of indigenous languages primarily due to forced migration as people are displaced from areas rendered uninhabitable by extreme climate events.

These findings highlight the little-known but wide-ranging impacts of climate change. This is exactly why the sustainable development goals that were set as part of the Paris Agreement included parameters on education, gender equality, and mental health, among others. Yet, what gets a disproportionate amount of attention in the policy and public discourse on climate change are emission cuts, transition to green energy and so on. While these are undoubtedly urgent and indispensable objectives, other areas that bear the brunt of climate change need to be factored into the global discourse on this phenomenon. Hearteningly, interventions are emerging in India — through education. UNICEF has found successful models in India that can stem learning losses due to extreme weather. In Bihar, the ‘Safe Saturday’ programme has reached over 8.4 million children to teach disaster preparedness while keeping them on track academically; climate change and disaster management are part of the curriculum in Kerala, with digital content reaching even remote areas; and Gujarat’s self-paced school safety course has been adopted by tens of thousands of schools. These are best practices that need to be replicated all over the country and improved upon.