At least 15 people drowned in open water in the UK’s recent heatwave, mostly children and teenagers. The public response is understandably urgent: warnings are issued, parents are told to talk to their children, and young people are reminded that rivers, lakes, reservoirs and canals can be dangerous.
Those warnings matter. Open water can be risky, especially when the air is hot but the water remains cold. Hidden currents, submerged hazards and cold-water shock can all turn a moment of relief into tragedy.
But warnings can also make the problem seem simpler than it is. Heatwave drownings are not only about water safety. They are also about climate justice. Evidence suggests these tragedies become more likely as temperatures rise. A study of almost 2,000 drowning deaths in the UK found that the risk of unintentional drowning increased by 7% for every 1°C rise in daily maximum temperatures, with the greatest risks on the hottest days.
As the UK gets hotter, children and teenagers will increasingly seek water to cool down, play, socialise and escape uncomfortable temperatures. But access to safe, affordable and supervised places to cool down is deeply unequal.
A changing climate means changing choices
Climate change is making hot spells in the UK more frequent and severe. By 2070, Met Office predictions show that two or more days above 30°C could become 16 times more frequent over southern parts of the UK than they are today. The conditions that draw children towards water during hot weather are likely to become more common.
Children and young people seeking water in a heatwave is not surprising. Water offers relief, play, friendship, freedom and escape. For many teenagers, gathering near water is not simply a reckless choice, but it is part of how they socialise and move through their local area, finding spaces to cope when the weather becomes uncomfortable.
Unequal access to cool spaces
Climate justice is not only about who causes climate change. It is also about who is most exposed to its effects, who has the fewest resources to adapt, and whose everyday lives are missing from climate adaptation planning.
Heat is not experienced equally. Some children can retreat into cooler homes, private gardens, cars, holidays, leisure centres or supervised swimming pools. Others live in hotter homes, more crowded neighbourhoods, or places with fewer trees, parks, shaded spaces and safe blue spaces. Some families can pay for swimming sessions or travel to safer places. Others cannot.
Indeed, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to drown, according to the National Child Mortality Database’s analysis of child drowning deaths in England, which found that the risk was more than twice as high for children living in the most deprived areas.
Simply telling young people simply to “stay away from open water” is incomplete. It may be correct as immediate safety advice, but it does not address the unequal conditions that shape children’s choices in the first place.
For a teenager in a hot, crowded home, with little money, limited transport and few local cooling spaces, a river, lake, canal or reservoir may feel like the only available place to go. This means that the risk is not simply individual, it is affected by place, poverty, infrastructure and climate.
The UK’s Climate Change Committee recently warned that, by the middle of the century, hotter heatwaves will mean 92% of existing homes could overheat. If homes, schools, streets and public spaces are not adapted, children will be left to find their own ways to cope.
Cooling spaces are climate infrastructure
The decline of public leisure infrastructure makes this worse. Swimming pools, leisure centres, shaded parks, youth spaces, safe blue spaces and affordable transport are not luxuries in a warming climate. They are part of how society adapts.
Yet this infrastructure is under pressure. Swim England and ukactive have warned that the loss of publicly accessible swimming water is accelerating.
This matters for climate justice because adaptation cannot depend on private resources. A climate-safe childhood should not depend on whether a family can pay for swimming, drive to the coast, access a garden or live in a cooler home.
If a river, lake, canal or reservoir becomes the most accessible cooling space available to a young person, then that is not only a water-safety problem. It is a failure of climate adaptation.
Learning to live with water
In my own flood education work with children and schools, I have seen how easily water is framed only as danger: do not enter floodwater, do not go near rivers, do not take risks. These warnings can be necessary. But on their own, they do not build the deeper water literacy children need in a changing climate.
In my work using participatory and creative methods, including children’s flood stories and immersive storytelling, young people are not treated simply as passive recipients of safety messages. They are encouraged to explore how water affects their everyday places, what risks look like locally, and what kinds of knowledge communities need to adapt.
The same principle matters during heatwaves. Children need more than fear-based messages. They need to understand the complexity and need this practical knowledge, but they also need environments where safer choices are possible.
There is a wider disconnect here. In winter, children may be warned away from floodwater. In summer, they may be warned away from open water. Both messages may be right in the moment. But in a changing climate, avoidance cannot be the whole strategy.
Recent drownings should prompt more than warnings. They should prompt a conversation about how children experience heat in an unequal society.
We cannot tell children to stay away from open water without asking what safe alternatives they actually have. And we cannot term this a water-safety problem when it is also a sign of a society not yet adapting to the heat that is already here.
If the UK is serious about preparing for hotter summers, it must build climate-safe places for children and young people: places where cooling down, playing, gathering and being safe are not privileges, but part of everyday public life.
Katie Parsons receives funding from United Kingdom Research and Innovation, Environment Agency, Wellcome Trust and the British Council.