Bangkok, Thailand:
Last month's record-breaking heat, which prompted governments in Asia to close schools, provides new evidence of how climate change is threatening the education of millions of children.
The arrival of seasonal rains has now brought relief to some parts of the region, but experts warn the wider problem remains and many countries are ill-prepared for the impact of climate change on education.
Asia is warming faster than the global average, and climate change is causing more frequent, longer and more intense heat waves.
But heat is not the only challenge.
A warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which can result in heavy rain and flooding.
This can damage or disable schools while they are being used as shelters.
Hot weather can also lead to wildfires and spikes in air pollution, closing schools everywhere from India to Australia.
“The climate crisis is already a reality for children in East Asia and the Pacific,” the UN children's agency UNICEF warned last year.
Mohua Akter Nur, 13, is living proof of that claim, as she sweltered in a one-room house in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, after her school closed.
The interrupted electricity means she can't even rely on a fan to cool the cramped home.
“The heat is unbearable,” she told AFP last month.
“Our school is closed, but I can't study at home.”
Poorest hit hardest
April was the 11th straight month of record heat on Earth, and the pattern is clear in Bangladesh, said Shumon Sengupta, country director of NGO Save the Children.
“Not only are the temperatures higher, the duration of the high temperatures is much longer,” he told AFP.
“Before, few areas had these heat waves, now the coverage of the country is much greater,” he added.
Schools in much of Asia are simply not equipped to deal with the growing impacts of climate change.
Bangladesh's urban schools can be sturdy, but are often overcrowded and have little ventilation, Sengupta says.
In rural areas, corrugated iron roofs can turn classrooms into ovens, and electricity for fans is unreliable.
In Bangladesh and elsewhere, students often walk long distances to and from school, putting them at risk of heatstroke.
But closing schools has serious consequences, “especially for children from poorer, vulnerable communities who lack access to resources such as computers, internet and books,” said Salwa Aleryani, UNICEF's health specialist for East Asia and the Pacific.
Those children “are also less likely to have better conditions at home to protect them during heat waves.”
They can be left unattended by parents who cannot afford to stay at home, and school closures put children at greater risk of child labor, child marriage and even human trafficking, Sengupta said.
'Wake up to this'
Climate change also indirectly threatens education.
UNICEF research in Myanmar found that crop shortages caused by rising temperatures and unpredictable rain were causing families to take their children out of school to help with work or because they could no longer afford school fees.
Some wealthy countries in the region have taken steps to protect children's education in the face of a changing climate.
In Japan, less than half of all public schools had air conditioning in 2018, but that figure rose to more than 95 percent in 2022 after a series of heat waves.
However, not all impacts can be mitigated, even in developed economies.
Australian authorities have repeatedly closed schools due to bushfires, and research has shown long-term effects on the learning of students whose communities have been hardest hit.
Developing countries in the region need help to invest in improving infrastructure, Sengupta said, but the only real solution to the crisis lies in tackling the cause: climate change.
“It is very important for the government and policymakers to really wake up to this,” he said.
“The climate crisis is a children's crisis. Adults are causing the crisis, but children are most affected by it.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)