EMO-GI #18 - Climate change as a safeguarding issue

Kit Rackley posted on their blog about the link between climate change and safeguarding.

There is no single incident. No immediate disclosure. No neat threshold at which action becomes mandatory.

Instead, we see cumulative pressure, uneven vulnerability, an emotional load without obvious cause, and questions children ask that don’t have simple answers. Safeguarding policy already recognises this kind of risk in other domains such as online harms, radicalisation, contextual abuse and mental health and wellbeing. Climate and ecological instability increasingly sit alongside these – not because educators are responsible for causing them, but because children experience them.

Source:

Rackley, Kit. (2020). Climate change – a safeguarding issue? (GA Magazine), pp.20-21 

This idea has also been picked up by others, including Jonathan Haidt. He has presented several TED Talks.

August 2024 - ‘The anxious generation’

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_are_smartphones_ruining_childhood

And May 2026 - what can we do.

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_why_you_should_be_a_techno_skeptic

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