In a year when Brazil is preparing for the potential effects of El Niño, a tool developed by UNICEF and Vital Strategies compiles indicators from municipalities across the country and guides public policies to reduce environmental risks affecting boys and girls.
Brasília, July 23, 2026—As Brazil prepares for the potential impacts of El Niño, UNICEF and the global public health organization Vital Strategies today launched the Children and Environment Dashboard, an online platform that presents data on children’s exposure to environmental risks across Brazil’s 5,571 municipalities.
This initiative brings together information on exposure to environmental and climate-related risks affecting boys and girls. Designed for municipal public-sector management, the tool consolidates 14 indicators organized into four thematic areas: school environment, extreme weather events, air quality, and environmental and urban infrastructure. The dashboard provides municipality-specific data and classifies indicators into three priority levels, signaling where immediate action is needed (high priority), where planning and the gradual adoption of improvement measures are recommended (medium priority), and where ongoing monitoring of existing conditions is sufficient (low priority). The dashboard also includes 50 recommendations to support municipal officials in planning and implementing public policies to address the challenges identified by the data, all with the goal of protecting children.
The dashboard shows that children across Brazil are exposed to a range of environmental and climate-related challenges, and significant patterns of inequality exist in the distribution of these risks. Many municipalities in the North and in the Legal Amazon, for example, face challenging conditions across several of the themes, underscoring the importance of increasing investments and strengthening public policies aimed at protecting children.
The tool also reveals that challenges related to water access, sanitation, waste collection, and housing conditions often occur simultaneously in the same location. Therefore, coordinated action across different areas of public administration is essential to achieve lasting improvements in children’s quality of life.
The results also indicate that challenges persist even in regions with traditionally higher socioeconomic indicators. For example, major urban centers have concerning air quality indicators, access to green spaces in schools is a challenge in the Southeast, and there is a need to promote adaptation to different extreme weather events across all regions of the country. Taking these specifics into account is essential for planning actions that are more effective and better suited to local needs.
“Children are the most affected by the impacts of climate change and pollution, even though they contribute the least to this scenario,” said Joaquin Gonzalez-Aleman, UNICEF Representative in Brazil. By bringing together accessible, geographically specific data, this tool contributes to setting priorities and strengthening actions adapted to local realities, while also integrating the strategies of the UNICEF Seal as a means of supporting the development of public policies. “Launched as the country prepares for the arrival of El Niño and its potential impacts, the dashboard was developed to support public officials in identifying the main risks affecting boys and girls in their territories, providing evidence to help guide more effective actions to protect their rights and development,” he said.
“Ensuring a safe, healthy, and sustainable environment is not only a right, but also essential to reducing inequalities and promoting the full development of children,” said Pedro de Paula, Senior Vice President of Innovation at Vital Strategies. “With a view to creating better and safer futures, this tool enables a richer and more individualized understanding of each territory, supporting action focused on predictable and preventable environmental risks.”
National-Level Indicator Analysis
To provide a diagnosis of how these 14 indicators are distributed across Brazil, UNICEF and Vital Strategies conducted an analysis to identify the regions with the highest concentration of social, environmental and climate vulnerabilities. This analysis shows that a significant share of Brazil’s territory is simultaneously exposed to multiple environmental risk factors. In 333 municipalities (6%), 10 or more indicators were classified as high priority, while 108 municipalities (1.9%) had no indicators classified as high priority among those analyzed. Among the municipalities with the highest number of indicators classified as high priority, there is a significant concentration in the North Region and the state of Maranhão.
School environments
The data show that the infrastructure available in schools remains a challenge for many children. One of the indicators examines sanitation infrastructure by measuring the proportion of students who attend schools lacking all three basic services—piped water, sanitation and waste collection. Municipalities where this indicator was classified as high priority are concentrated mainly in the North (71% of municipalities in the region) and Northeast (49%). Another indicator assesses the presence of green spaces in schools. For this indicator, more than half of municipalities in the Northeast (52%) fall into the high-priority category. In the Southeast, 39% of municipalities also have a high-priority classification for this indicator, but the figure takes on even greater significance because these municipalities are home to more than half of the region’s children.
Extreme weather events
The indicators identify territories that have experienced heavy rainfall, heat waves, and droughts above historical averages in recent years. Municipalities where heavy rainfall was classified as high priority are concentrated in the North (91%) and South (68%). Heat waves are classified as high priority in 64% of municipalities in the Central-West and 60% in the North. The drought indicator shows a distribution that differs from the pattern traditionally associated with the phenomenon in Brazil because it measures recent events. Municipalities where this indicator is classified as high priority are concentrated mainly in the Southeast (38%) and Central-West (28%), with an additional concentration in municipalities in parts of the North where severe droughts have occurred in recent years, such as the Upper Rio Negro region in Amazonas.
Air quality
The indicator for air quality measures the number of days during which air pollution from fine particulate matter is above the limit recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). The highest incidence is in the North, where 94% of municipalities have a high-priority classification for this indicator. In the Southeast, a smaller proportion of municipalities also have a high-priority classification (39%), but these municipalities are home to 72% of the region’s child population. These data point to different types of challenges: In the North, the high concentration of particulate matter is primarily associated with wildfires. In the Southeast, where the issue is concentrated in large metropolitan areas, the main causes are road transportation and industrial production.
High-priority classifications for the indicator measuring air pollution associated with road transportation are more frequent in municipalities in the Central-West (66%) and South (57%). Regarding the density of hotspots, a measure of the occurrence of fires, 41% of municipalities in the Northeast have a high-priority classification for this indicator. The data indicate that the occurrence of fires and wildfires is not restricted to the Amazon and affects other regions of the country.
Environmental and urban infrastructure
The indicator measuring access to treated water is classified as high priority in 60% of municipalities in the North and 48% in the Northeast. The same pattern is observed for the indicator measuring the proportion of children living in households without a connection to the public water supply network. Data on sanitation also point to significant regional inequalities. Inadequate sewage systems are classified as high priority in 87% of municipalities in the North and 55% of municipalities in the Northeast. Indicators related to inadequate waste collection follow a similar trend, with high-priority classifications occurring more frequently in municipalities in the North and Northeast.
Indicators related to children’s housing conditions show that municipalities with the highest proportion of inadequate housing are concentrated mainly in the North (79%), Northeast (44%) and Central-West (40%). Inadequate housing can increase children’s exposure to other environmental risks and make access to essential services more difficult.
About the Dashboard
Developed by UNICEF and Vital Strategies, the Children and Environment Dashboard is designed for public-sector management. The tool consolidates 14 indicators organized into four thematic areas: school environments, extreme weather events, air quality, and environmental and urban infrastructure. It provides individualized profiles for municipalities and offers a diagnosis of each city’s situation, highlighting the main challenges affecting the well-being of children in each territory.
Within the dashboard, each indicator is classified into one of three priority levels—high, medium or low. A high-priority classification signals where immediate action is needed, medium points to where planning and the gradual adoption of improvement measures are recommended, and low specifies where ongoing monitoring of existing conditions is sufficient.
In addition to providing geographically specific information, the tool includes 50 recommendations to support municipal officials in planning and implementing public policies aimed at protecting children. The recommendations—based on guidance from the federal government, multilateral organizations such as UNICEF and the World Health Organization, and other specialized sources—are tailored to the different indicators analyzed and seek to support priority-setting and the development of responses suited to local realities.