How the Climate Crisis Is Reshaping Children’s Lives: Insights From the LIFE Study

Climate change isn’t just about rising temperatures or unpredictable rainfall patterns. For millions of children living in climate-affected regions, it is already transforming the conditions in which they grow, learn, play, and stay safe. As part of LIFE, our longitudinal study following children and families over several years, we’re beginning to see a clearer picture of how environmental shocks ripple through their daily realities and reshape their vulnerability to different forms of exploitation.

This blog highlights some of the key findings that sit alongside our new factsheet.

Climate Change as a “Threat Multiplier”

One of the clearest messages emerging from the LIFE study is that climate change doesn’t create new problems out of thin air, but it intensifies the ones that already exist. Children in regions already affected by poverty, marginalisation, or conflict are now experiencing sharper, faster, and more frequent disruptions. Droughts and resource scarcity push families into increasingly difficult choices. As these pressures build, so do the risks of child labour, early marriage, trafficking, and sexual exploitation.

Livelihood Losses Push Families Into Survival Mode

In the border between Kenya and Ethiopia, families consistently describe how climate-related shocks have eroded their ability to provide for their children.

• Failed harvests mean families must travel further or work longer to find food and income.
• Young people take on more labour to support household needs, especially when caregivers migrate in search of work.

What this means in practice? Children are left alone for longer periods, pushed into hazardous jobs, or exposed to adults who may exploit their vulnerability. Poverty becomes not just an economic crisis but a protection crisis.

Migration and Displacement Increase Exposure to Harm

When families move, whether temporarily or permanently, children often lose the networks that usually protect them: teachers, neighbours, extended relatives, and community structures.

In the LIFE study, we’ve already seen that:

• Unaccompanied or separated children face significantly higher risks of trafficking and exploitation.
• Moving to informal settlements exposes them to unfamiliar environments and limited services.
• Caregivers struggle to maintain routines and emotional support during displacement, which affects children’s sense of safety and wellbeing.

Family Separation Leaves Children Exposed

One of the most painful impacts emerging from this study is the way climate change fractures family structures. When caregivers migrate in search of work, fall ill, or are killed in climate-aggravated conflicts or disasters, children are left without the emotional and physical protection they need. This creates openings for traffickers and exploitative adults who take advantage of children navigating these situations alone.

Why This Matters

Children are living at the centre of multiple, overlapping crises, but their experiences are still too often overlooked in climate policy and humanitarian planning. The LIFE study makes it clear: child protection must be a central pillar of climate action.

Understanding these patterns over time, not just at a single moment, helps us see how risks accumulate, how families adapt, and where targeted interventions can make the biggest difference.

This is only the start. As LIFE continues over the coming years, we’ll track how children’s lives shift with every drought, flood, displacement, or recovery cycle. And we’ll keep building evidence on what truly works to protect children in a rapidly changing climate.