Bangladesh ranks as the world’s fourth-highest climate-risk country for children facing overlapping climate hazards, according to a report by the UN children’s agency UNICEF, which ranked India, Pakistan, Vietnam and Myanmar alongside Bangladesh as high-risk Asian states.
UNICEF’s “Children’s Climate Risk Report 2026” identifies a compounding crisis in which river and coastal flooding, tropical cyclones, heatwaves, drought and air pollution converge on Bangladesh’s children.
Riverine flooding poses the single largest hazard. Scoring 10 out of 10 on UNICEF’s risk index, Bangladesh shares the world’s highest danger level, with more than 50 percent of its children living in acute riverine flood zones that threaten access to healthcare, education, nutrition, safe water and personal protection.
Globally, some 1.8 billion children face drought risks, over 1.2 billion suffer extreme heat exposure, 662 million lie in tropical storm tracks, 337 million live in river-flood areas and 33 million inhabit coastal-flood zones. Nearly 80 percent of those affected are concentrated in 10 countries, including Bangladesh.
Roughly 60 million Bangladeshi children endure at least one climate threat. More than 24 million face high exposure to multiple hazards of floods, drought and cyclones, while 60 million face the twin pressures of drought and air pollution. Cyclones threaten approximately 22 million children, and river flooding directly endangers around 32 million.
Evaluating 160 nations, UNICEF assigned Bangladesh an overall child vulnerability score of 9.38 out of 10. Conflict-torn Myanmar leads the index at 10, followed by Pakistan at 9.49, Vietnam at 9.41, India at 9.21, Cambodia at 8.88 and China at 8.24.
Across distinct hazards, Bangladesh ranks highest globally for riverine flood risk at 10 out of 10. It scores 8.13 for coastal floods, 9.7 for tropical storms, 9.65 for droughts, 9.24 for extreme heat and 9.7 for air pollution. The country, however, scores comparatively better on baseline child metrics covering health, nutrition, education, poverty and maternal mortality
UNICEF noted that heavily populated developing nations such as Bangladesh see children subjected to overlapping hazards. Shorter recovery intervals between heatwaves, cyclones and inundations leave younger populations facing acute, compounding vulnerabilities that threaten long-term developmental outcomes.
As the climate crisis unfolds, early investments to adapt essential social services to the needs of children in a rapidly changing climate will reduce future costs and avoid more costly investment needs later on, the UNICEF report added.
Climate strategists argue that Bangladeshi adaptation policies must put children at their centre. Because climate risks undermine healthcare, education and nutrition, experts advocate directing capital beyond physical infrastructure into child-focused health systems, safe water networks, social safety nets and targeted climate finance.
Save the Children, an international NGO specialising in child rights, reported that young people routinely bear the brunt of climate disruptions in Bangladesh.
“In any climate-related risk or disaster, children, the elderly and persons with disabilities suffer most,” Simon Rahman, senior manager (humanitarian) for Save the Children in Bangladesh, told Bonik Barta. “They often lack the knowledge, preparation or physical capacity. But children are the most vulnerable population.”
“Disasters have a multidimensional impact on children’s lives,” he added. “First, they suffer the worst health consequences. Then their education is disrupted. When schooling stops, boys are pushed into child labour and girls into early marriage. In shelters, children face exploitation and abuse. We see this pattern often, especially in flood- and cyclone-prone areas.”
To mitigate these vulnerabilities, Rahman urged authorities to integrate youth needs directly into state response strategies and expand climate risk topics across the national curriculum.
UNICEF called for immediate, coordinated policy interventions, recommending that comprehensive national adaptation plans prioritise child welfare by strengthening the resilience of health, education, sanitation and social safety infrastructure. It stresses that disaster preparedness and climate finance mechanisms must explicitly account for children, while granting young people a formal voice in climate governance.
Academia has similarly underscored the need for tailored, geography-specific adaptation frameworks rather than uniform national policies. “Because we have a high concentration of climate disasters and a very large child population, entire zones are at risk — particularly the haor wetlands, the coast, the hill tracts and river-erosion belts,” Md Moniruzzaman, a professor of geography and environment at Jagannath University, told Bonik Barta. “Children in all four zones are suffering. We have to build plans centred on them.”
Moniruzzaman urged residential schools in hilly regions, floating classrooms across seasonal wetlands and expanded cyclone shelters along vulnerable coastlines to preserve educational continuity. He added that rapid urbanisation makes urban heatwaves and droughts an increasing hazard in cities such as Dhaka, requiring heat-resistant school design.
“A single template for the whole country won’t work,” Moniruzzaman said. “Plans must be region-specific.”
Concurrently, UNICEF outlined three core strategic imperatives for governments and international development partners: executing rapid, aggressive global greenhouse gas reductions, hardening child-critical infrastructure through climate adaptation, and guaranteeing youth participation in formal climate policy decisions.
Government officials insist state planning is adapting to meet these vulnerability baselines. “Our objective is to shield children and the elderly from environmental health risks,” Dr Md Saimum Parvez, special assistant to the prime minister for environment, forest and climate change, told Bonik Barta. “We regard women and children as the population most vulnerable to climate change, so we have specific plans to mitigate the harmful effects on children. Our goal is a safe and healthy environment for children by reducing pollution.”
Parvez added that environmental preservation and climate resilience form core pillars of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party administration’s broader economic policy.
“This isn’t just an environmental issue; it’s a vital part of our economic growth strategy,” he said. “Typically, the environment isn’t treated as a separate component of development planning. But we see it as one of the foundations.”