Children make up 37-40% of the population in Mexico’s poorest states of Chiapas and Guerrero. 60% of the population under 18 fall below the poverty line, exacerbating the effects of illnesses whose increase has been tied directly to climate change, such as intestinal infections, diarrhea, acute respiratory tract infections, chronic malnutrition, dengue and heat stroke. [1]
The use of children as symbols for the future has exploded in the emerging culture of climate change. Recent global rises in temperature, sea levels, greenhouse gasses and rates of deadly storms have called into question the feasibility of the human race’s current carbon footprint. Generational divisions have become the center in this predicament, as many in the Global North are quick to play the blame-game, pawning fault upon older generations for their contributions to climate change. Many are also quick to play mother hen, using language and images that evoke guilt and responsibility that galvanize adults into structural and behavioral change [2]. Perhaps the most ubiquitous case of these divisions can be found in child activist Greta Thunberg, whose visibility and widespread recognition can be attributed to her status as a minor. The objective of this blame-throwing behavior and activism is to protect children from the gross negligence they feel their parents imposed upon them. This conjecture enforces the notion that children have the right to a life unthreatened by the action of others.
Children’s right to protection is undoubtedly infringed upon as they are collectively victimized by the mountainous task of curbing carbon emissions. Furthermore, a recent UN study into Children and Climate Change asserts the victimization of children through the side effects of environmental negligence in their daily lives. This negligence, however, is notably not at the hands of Mexicans, but rather at the hands of American industry in the north, and on Mexican soil. The rising prevalence of natural disasters has recently been tied directly to climate change as exemplified with rising rates of wildfires, hurricanes, tropical storms and potentially even earthquakes in Mexico. Many societies in the Global South, rural areas of central and southern Mexico included, are ill equipped to handle disasters of this severity and frequency. Rural regions lack the advanced infrastructure to protect water sources and electrical systems from damage and contamination in the event of a natural disaster. In a 2009 World Health Organization report, of the global total deaths attributed to climate change, it is cited that 85% of them are child mortalities. This disproportionate rate of death in children in the face of climate change triggers many questions as to how exactly we can protect them from health and environmental risks.
Protected children
Constructs of childhood have continually shifted from decade to decade and population to population. Viviana Zelizer posits that the “sentimental child” is a construction of childhood that emerged as a reversal from the economically active child of the 19th century who often functioned external to the household, helping the family to generate and earn an income. In Western cultures experiencing this newly sentimentalized form of childhood, children are to be kept “off the streets, protected and supervised”. This construction of the sacred or sentimental child is often characterized by the projections adults place upon them: children need more care than adults, their cognitive and emotional instability requires nurturing that fulfills their physical needs and assuages their short-lived anxieties. They need rescuing from themselves as well as the precarious world around them [3]. A band-aid after a scrape on the pavement or trip over one's shoelaces not only carries healing powers for the cut, but also for the child’s distress. More recently, this has become an avenue of exploitation for the capitalist machine with the creation of kid’s-branded band-aids showing images of children’s movies, cartoons, princesses, ninja turtles and other icons. These products are marketed to children, reinforcing the notion that they have a special status; as kids they don’t just get band-aids, they get kid band-aids. The catch is that these band-aids and parallel products aren’t functionally different. They are intended for children, but they don’t protect or heal them any more than the generic option. Applied to rural and poor childhoods in Mexico, this metaphor ties the representation of the sentimentalized construction of childhood with the deceptive measures of policies and social action that claim to protect it for this vulnerable, victimized population.
This concept of child protection exists in cultures globally, but when turning a gaze toward children in Mexico, we find an interesting dichotomy of western neo-imperial influence and traditional values that call the practicality of the “sentimental child” into question. Mexico has frequently been characterized by this two-sided temperament, spatially positioned as the border between the Global North and Global South. It experiences unique social, political, economic and climate challenges as a result of this tug-of war with industry in the North. Recently with the emergence of climate change agreements and neoliberal economics, Mexico has opened itself to foreign investments in the renewable energy industry. Due to massive potential from river convergence and low-lying valleys in the south, hydro-power and wind power sites are popping up like weeds across Oaxaca and Chiapas. These massive dams and wind farms are drastically altering the environment and floodplains of the region, causing frequent flooding and agricultural difficulties, ultimately increasing cases of vector-borne diseases in these community’s water sources. Clearly, children’s issues find a perplexing position in Mexico, as Western generated ideology of children’s rights and the protected child conflict with climate change-inducing, Western, industrial influence in Mexico’s disaster-prone regions.
An indisputable fact about children remains: children quite literally are the future. Their potential longevity on the planet grants them appointment as the future of our families, nations and the greater human race. Children’s socio-political power has been fetishized for bringing people together, as they have become symbols for progress, evolution and change in many cultures [4]. Simply put, if you protect the children, you protect the future. But exactly what threats are you protecting the future from? Perhaps the precarious realities of contemporary society: dissenting ideologies, adverse health outcomes, and the side effects of gradual change in regional climate patterns.
Endangered Children
With recent global agreements and regional pacts climate change has begun its incorporation into policy initiatives. Climate change has become a bargaining chip in trade economics, as exemplified by the renegotiation of NAFTA to include climate change mitigation initiatives. Analogous to the case of our Mother Hens, politicians, the press and organizations use images of children to vindicate these types of policy changes. The catch with these policies is the same as with the band-aids: they are intended for future generations, yet they don’t protect them nor prepare them any more for the most pressing threat to their livelihoods. Mexico is obliged to protect against threats to children’s health and best interests, per its status as a signatory on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Yet notably, in Mexico’s reformed 2018 General Civil Protection law, intended to set the baseline approach to protecting all civilians against social and environmental threats, children are not mentioned. In Mexico and beyond, children rarely appear in civil protection laws and the text of disaster relief and preparedness policy, nor do they have significant special dispensation to accommodate their vulnerability. In essence, protection for children has limited follow-throughs despite the pre-established notion that they have the right to special care.
Evocative children
Along with media spotlight placed on Greta and her climate change initiatives, other child activists like indigenous Mexican-Americans Xiye Bastida and Xiuhtezcatl Martinez have emerged within climate change culture to advocate for the protections they are not being provided. When we consider the rise of child activists for climate change, a universal belief in children’s right to protection conflicts with children’s right to a childhood. Children are seen as capable of inspiring and engendering change, becoming iconized as representations of innocence and the future. This popular imagery comes in many forms, one of which is embedded in the assumption that children are natural beings, imbued with an inherently spiritual connection to the land [5]. In climate change culture children are represented as those that can heal the earth. Children are analogous to the SpongeBob band-aids in our image, symbolically placating the cracked earth. This sentiment is paralleled with the (perhaps) familiar imagery of children’s hands cradling the earth. These types of images pave the way for child activists to find a voice in climate change matters.
Emerging expressions of this agency include climate change litigation cases, in which children across the globe are suing individual nations for insufficiently curbing carbon emissions. Xiuhtezcatl Martinez is one of 17 young plaintiffs leading the charge against environmental crimes, antagonizing these crimes and their perpetrators in the court case Juliana vs. United States. Children are also being engaged in aid organizations’ disaster preparedness initiatives aimed at educating youth to be self-sufficient in times of crisis. In 2019, UNICEF and the Mexican Secretariat of the Environment and Natural Resources partnered to publish a manual for children titled
El Cambio Climático y Mis Derechos, translated to “Climate Change and My Rights” (pictured to the left) which reinforces children’s rights standards put forth by the UNCRC. One of the main tenets of this manual lies in the education of children to be prepared in times of disaster. Under this approach, preparedness is seen as protection, a notion that can have great effect on child mortality rates in the wake of disaster. This begs the question, however, does the child’s possession of such agency and voice take away their own childhood? If they are expected to be self-sufficient and self-protective, are they still experiencing a childhood?
These confounding discourses of children's rights find a thought-provoking home in the culture of climate change: children need protection because they are “the future,” yet with this iconization as symbols of the future, they become actors with the agency to make change, which in turn may take away their childhood. Children may be the glue to hold the cracks of modern society (and the earth) together, but it remains to be seen what ultimate implications their ubiquity in climate change culture will have on the notion of childhood.
[1] H. Riojas-Rodríguez, M.L. Quezada-Jiménez, P. Zúñiga-Bello, & M. Hurtado-Díaz, "Climate Change and Potential Health Effects in Mexican Children," Annals of Global Health, 84:2 (2018): 281–284.
[2] Sheridan Bartlett, “Children and the Culture of Climate Change,” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 4:3 (2011): 497–505.
[3] Viviana Zelizer, “From Useful to Useless and Back to Useful? Emerging Patterns in the Valuation of Children.” In Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994 [1985]): 208-28.
[4] Patricia Holland, “Crybabies and Damaged Children.” In Picturing Childhood : The Myth of the Child in Popular Imagery (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004): 143–77
[5] Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, “From the Child to the Noble Savage,” How To Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic, Trans. David Kunzle (New York: International General, 1975 [1971]): 41-47.
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