Towards children-oriented equitable adaptation: insights from a citizen science initiative on urban heat

Abstract Heat affects children’s daily lives in multiple and intersecting ways. While the impacts of heat on children’s health and education have received increasing attention in the context of climate change, little is known about how children respond to heat-related risks in their everyday lives. By gaining insights from the citizen science initiative Heat Watchers in Action, this article aims to provide new empirical evidence on current adaptation practices and future preferences of children living in warming cities. Moreover, we reflect on the potential of citizen science as a tool to advance climate justice and to enable child-oriented equitable urban adaptation. This initiative, developed in disadvantaged areas of the metropolis of Barcelona during the summer of 2024, engaged a hundred children aged 10–12 as heat watchers. By analyzing the Heat Diaries that participants filled at home and the collaborative school workshops, we found a diverse repertoire of practices to cope with heat which we classified in five domains (hydration and food, body, house, school, and neighborhood/city). The most recurrent adaptation practices reported in Heat Diaries were low-cost, accessible and pleasant practices such as eating ice creams, using fans and other cooling devices, drinking water, or taking showers. Besides ice creams, main individual preferences also considered the adaptation of public outdoor spaces by using green and blue infrastructures. Transformation of their neighborhoods and cities was also a recurrent theme in the visions of future adaptation co-created during school workshops. Future adaptation options were also distinguished from traditional adult-centric strategies due to the incorporation of playful and, in some cases, fictional proposals. This study sheds light over an underexplored vulnerable group in climate adaptation research and policy and provides valuable insights into how citizen science can inform urban climate resilience by actively engaging children.