Childhood should not depend on the weather

By early evening, many families across Philippine cities and towns make the same quiet calculation. How long can the electric fan run before the meter spins too fast? Which appliances should be switched off to conserve energy?  When heat won’t let a child rest, families improvise. One mother in an urban barangay bathes her toddler twice before bedtime, not for play but so the child can cool down enough to sleep.

This is not an emergency scene. It is ordinary life.

Climate pressure does not always arrive as floodwaters or evacuation orders. More often, it becomes embedded in daily routines. This shift is subtle, but it is consequential. Families must manage heat, safeguard rest, and contend with rising costs.

If childhood had a checklist, it would be simple: a good night’s sleep, clean air, safe water, decent food, and a home that does not make you sick. Yet for many children in the Philippines today, even these basics are getting harder to guarantee. Cost-of-living pressures continue to rise, and recent energy price shocks could further deepen the strain on vulnerable families.

When heat becomes a health issue

Children are not small adults. Their bodies heat up faster, cool down more slowly, and rely on caregivers and systems for protection. Prolonged extreme heat increases risks of heat stress, dehydration, respiratory illness, and reduced concentration, with infants, young children and those in dense urban areas most exposed. These risks are often preventable but only if primary health care systems are prepared to anticipate heat stress, advise families early, and respond before conditions escalate.

Heat can also affect children before birth. Evidence links maternal heat exposure to higher risks of miscarriage, preterm birth, and low birthweight, while increasing health risks for mothers. When hotter seasons coincide with higher energy costs, families ration cooling, lose sleep, and watch health risks mount.

These pressures may not look like emergencies, but children bear the consequences longest. In the Philippines, children are on the frontline of the climate crisis. Over 97 per cent are exposed to three or more climate-related shocks. What families in the Philippines are experiencing today mirrors what many communities across Southeast Asia are already facing. This underscores the need for policies that protect children now.

Climate resilience and shock responsiveness is about systems that work

There is no single gadget that can protect children from heat risks. What works is far less glamorous: a health system that anticipates heat stress instead of reacting to it. We must equip health workers and community workers with skills, tools, and reasonable compensation to prepare for and treat heat illness early and advise families on how to protect themselves.

Health facilities must keep running in peak heat, with facilities and supplies to treat heat-related illness and back-up power to safeguard the cold chain so vaccines and other essentials remain available when temperatures rise.

But for those who earn their living outside, like farmers and construction workers, the choice is often stark. Do they follow heat-safety advice, or lose a day’s income? Climate-resilient primary health care must be paired with social protection, so families can take protective measures without risking their livelihoods.

At UNICEF Philippines, climate resilience means strengthening the services children rely on every day, including climate-adaptive primary health care and shock-responsive social protection that help families follow health guidance during extreme heat.

But governments should not carry this burden alone.

What the private sector makes possible

Climate risk is now an economic risk. Heat affects productivity, household spending, health costs, and long-term development. Treating climate resilience as someone else’s problem is no longer realistic.

Through the REACH (Resilience, Environment, and Child Health) programme, Prudence Foundation and UNICEF Philippines are working together to strengthen climate resilient health and social protection systems alongside government partners. The priority is to reinforce systems that serve children to perform under climate pressure, before preventable harm falls on children and their families.  By embedding climate resilience into public health and social protection systems, this approach can be scaled within the Philippines — and adapted for other countries facing similar risks.

This kind of partnership goes beyond funding. The private sector brings expertise in long-term planning, risk management, and innovation. These capabilities matter when climate risks are increasingly persistent. When aligned with public policy and child-centred goals,

these strengths complement the role of government to bring solutions and innovations at scale and deliver long term impacts.

This is a chance for more partners to step in and help set a new standard of protection for children. Private sector expertise can help scale heat resilience through government systems, from heat-ready clinics and supply chains to early-warning data that triggers faster action. The ask is straightforward. Align core capabilities with child-centred outcomes and invest early so children are protected before heat becomes a crisis.

Here is what decision-makers need to do now

We are still building many of our systems for the climate we used to have, not the climate children are growing up in today.

Budgets, standards, and infrastructure plans must catch up. Climate adaptive health and education facilities, safer housing and community spaces, and shock-responsive social protection should be treated as core infrastructure. The cost of inaction is already visible in strained health services, education outcomes, and families pushed closer to the edge.

Climate resilience is sound economics, not just compassionate policy.

Protecting childhood means strengthening systems before the next shock hits.

Climate pressure hits hardest where options are few. Families with limited resources have fewer ways to cope with heat. Rising energy costs turn basic protection into a financial calculation. Children, who are the least responsible for climate change, are the most exposed to its effects.

UNICEF Philippines and Prudence Foundation believe climate resilience is, at its core, about protecting childhood.

Children’s health, education, play, and safety should not rise or fall with the weather or the cost of electricity bill, therefore strengthening systems to protect them is both possible and necessary.

Children are growing up now. Climate pressure is compounding. Our response must match the pace of the risk.

Kyungsun Kim is the UNICEF Representative in the Philippines, with extensive experience leading child rights, humanitarian, and development work across Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

Nicole Ngeow is the Executive Director of Prudence Foundation, the community investment arm of Prudential plc., leading philanthropic programmes that build long-term resilience for underserved communities in Asia and Africa.