As India confronts an escalating climate crisis, it is the nation’s most vulnerable its children who are facing the harshest consequences. In remote villages and crowded urban slums, from Odisha to Assam, the connection between rising temperatures and shrinking meals is growing painfully clear. Climate change, once viewed as an environmental concern, is now deepening child hunger, stunting growth, and disrupting childhoods in silence.
Erratic weather patterns scorching heatwaves, flash floods, long droughts are wiping out crops and livelihoods, leaving families without food and children with empty plates. In Balangir, Odisha, a child who once had three meals a day now survives on plain rice and salt. In Assam’s Barpeta district, families displaced by floods struggle for basic sustenance as food stores are lost and Anganwadi centres remain closed. These are not isolated events, but part of a widening national crisis.
Children require more food and water relative to their body size. But with food prices surging after every disaster and local harvests failing repeatedly, families are forced to make heartbreaking choices. Often, it’s the girls who eat last and least. In Jharkhand, after back-to-back poor harvests, 13-year-old Munni was pulled from school and now survives on minimal food while her brothers continue their education. Malnutrition and anaemia are rampant. School dropouts are increasing. And the damage being done physically and emotionally may last a lifetime.
Climate migration has added another layer of vulnerability. Families fleeing parched lands or flood zones end up in cities, where they live in temporary shelters without access to clean water or proper nutrition. Children like Sabita in Durgapur, who migrated from drought-hit Birbhum, are now growing up on processed snacks and leftover scraps, their growth and mental development stunted even further.
The crisis is not limited to hunger. Toxic air, worsened by heatwaves, wildfires, and pollution, is affecting children’s lungs and brains. And the psychological toll of repeated climate shocks is profound. Children in climate-vulnerable regions experience persistent fear and anxiety. Their sense of safety is eroding. Their futures are slipping out of reach.
India ranks 26th in UNICEF Children Climate Risk Index a high-risk nation with a high burden. But despite the grim statistics, the solutions are within reach. Local, climate-resilient strategies are already being recommended: promoting drought-resistant crops like millets in nutrition programs, building flood-proof community centres, mapping health and climate data together, and adapting school meals to local food availability.
Yet what missing is urgency. The longer governments and institutions delay, the more irreversible the damage becomes. What begins as a failed harvest ends as a lost childhood and eventually, a lost generation.
Climate change and child hunger can no longer be addressed in isolation. Their connection is immediate, direct, and devastating. The stories are unfolding now in every flood-prone village, every drought-hit farm, and every displaced family sheltering in the shadows of India’s cities. The time to act is not tomorrow. It is now.