When Climate Enters the Body: APUS, Pregnancy, and Education in Times of Climate Emergency

DREX Cidadão, Citizen Carbon Credits, and Bribri Prosperity as a Zone 2 Metabolism

Maybe we need to begin with a simple sentence:

climate does not stay outside the body.

When heat rises, it does not only change the thermometer. It enters the skin, breathing, sleep, the heart, the missing water, the school that closes, the pregnancy that needs care, and the child trying to learn in a territory that has become too hot.

In BrainLatam2026 language, this is APUS: body-territory. The body does not end at the skin. Territory enters the body as heat, air, water, shade, noise, fear, displacement, food, school, care, and the possibility of play.

In 2023, the World Health Organization published a call to action to protect maternal, newborn, and child health from the impacts of climate change, including risks for pregnant women, newborns, children, and mental health. A systematic review and meta-analysis published in Nature Medicine also reinforces that heat exposure is an important threat to maternal, fetal, and neonatal health.

So the question is not only:

“is it too hot?”

The BrainLatam2026 question is:

what body is receiving this heat?
What territory protects or abandons this body?
What pregnancy, childhood, and learning are being shaped by this climate?

Territory begins before school

Pregnancy is a stage in which the body is still organizing its basic systems. Before the notebook, there is the placenta. Before the test, there is sleep. Before literacy, there is temperature. Before attention, there is a body in formation.

A 2024 review on intrauterine heat exposure shows that many scientific gaps remain, but it also indicates that heat during pregnancy may contribute to future inequalities in health and social outcomes, especially in territories with fewer adaptation resources. A birth cohort study published in 2025 found an association between maternal exposure to heat waves, especially at the beginning and end of pregnancy, and a higher risk of neurodevelopmental delay in young children.

This does not mean blaming each pregnant person for the heat they receive. On the contrary: it means showing that pregnancy is public policy. The climate that reaches the pregnant body is not merely “environment.” It is APUS entering development.

Heat is also an educational crisis

UNICEF warns that young children are especially vulnerable to heat stress because they regulate body temperature less efficiently and depend more on adults, water, shade, housing, and infrastructure for protection. In 2025, UNICEF also estimated that at least 242 million students in 85 countries had their schooling disrupted by extreme climate events in 2024, including heat waves, cyclones, storms, floods, and droughts.

This changes the conversation.

It is not enough to ask how to teach climate change. The question is:

how can learning happen when climate itself pushes the body into defense?

Zone 3 is not only social trauma, violence, or ideology capturing the body. Zone 3 can also be climate entering as physiological threat.

When heat is extreme, the body spends energy to survive: regulating temperature, seeking water, reducing effort, dealing with discomfort, sleeping worse, and sustaining some level of attention. At school, this may look like disinterest. But it may be a body in defense.

When climate pushes the body into Zone 3, attention becomes survival before it becomes learning.

The World Bank, in the report Choosing Our Future: Education for Climate Action, also reinforces that education must be part of the climate response, both to protect learning and to build capacities for adaptation and climate action.

Citizen Carbon Credit: carbon is not financial smoke

Here, the climate discussion needs to leave abstraction.

If heat enters the pregnant body, if children lose sleep, if school closes because of climate events, then carbon cannot be only a distant asset, spreadsheet, contract, or compensation promise. It must return to the territory as real care.

In the BrainLatam2026 reading, we need to imagine a Citizen Carbon Credit: credits directed primarily to the individual taxpayer ID of residents near or inside preserved areas, family farmers, traditional communities, original peoples, and families who prove real stewardship practices: selective waste collection, composting, reforestation, water preservation, spring protection, waste reduction, and territorial care.

With clear rules:

do not concentrate credits in a few individuals;
do not deliver them to corporations;
do not allow carbon without territory;
do not transform forest into a fictitious asset;
do not let financial funds profit from the carbon protected by the community.

Carbon needs to return as shade in school, water in the community, composting in the neighborhood, protection of springs, tree planting, thermal safety for pregnant women, and Zone 2 for children to learn.

Debt-money or metabolism-money?

Here comes the critique of the current financial system.

A large part of social life is organized by money that is born as debt: loans, collection, collateral, interest, and future obligation. In BrainLatam2026 language:

debt-money is economic Zone 3.

It forces the social body to run before breathing. It forces families to produce before belonging. It forces territories to become collateral. It forces nature to become an asset. It forces carbon to become a number for leverage.

The critique is not against money. It is against money being born only as debt and collection. The critique is not against carbon as a tool. It is against carbon becoming financial smoke.

The question is different:

what if money could also be born as a metabolism of belonging?

DREX Cidadão, in the BrainLatam2026 reading, would be money born in the citizen as minimum life energy: to keep the social body in Zone 2, protect pregnant women, children, schools, sleep, food, territory, culture, and learning.

DREX Cidadão protects the body.
Citizen Carbon Credit protects the territory.
APUS shows that body and territory are one continuity.

Bribri Prosperity and Zero Waste

Bribri Prosperity, in our reading, helps us imagine an economy that does not separate life, territory, and care. It is not prospering through destruction. It is not growing by poisoning one’s own ground. It is not transforming nature into a distant spreadsheet.

It is prospering as territorial metabolism.

That is why Zero Waste is not just recycling. It is a pedagogy of APUS: separating waste, composting, reducing disposal, protecting water, cultivating soil, planting trees in schools, and returning carbon as local life.

Zero Waste is the social body refusing to poison its own body-territory.

School as climate shelter

The school of the future cannot be only a building with classrooms, boards, and tests. It needs to be a climate shelter: shade, water, ventilation, trees, a living courtyard, heat-sensitive schedules, adequate food, protection protocols, and a curriculum that helps teenagers understand climate without falling into panic or denial.

The scientific question for teenagers is:

how does the heat of the territory alter body, attention, sleep, pregnancy, and learning — and how can APUS policies bring Zone 2 back?

A BrainLatam2026 study could measure EEG for attention and fatigue, fNIRS for prefrontal effort, ECG/HRV for autonomic regulation, breathing, GSR, classroom temperature, humidity, sleep, thermal comfort, tree coverage, and local practices of composting and selective waste collection.

The hypothesis would be:

when the territory reduces extreme heat and offers protected APUS, the body spends less energy in defense and can better sustain pregnancy, sleep, attention, learning, and Zone 2.

Closing

Climate enters the body.
But money also enters.

When it is born as debt, it tightens.
When it is born as interest, it pressures.
When it is born as leverage, it distances.
When it is born as fictitious carbon, it betrays the territory.

The climate emergency is not only an environmental crisis. It is a crisis of APUS, pregnancy, learning, Zone 2, belonging, and money being born far from life.

The final question is:

will we let money be born from debt and carbon be born from speculation, or will we allow money and carbon to be born as public metabolism of belonging, territorial care, and life in Zone 2?

Post-2021 references used

World Health Organization. Protecting maternal, newborn and child health from the impacts of climate change: A call for action, 2023.
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240085350

Lakhoo, D. P. et al. A systematic review and meta-analysis of heat exposure impacts on maternal, fetal and neonatal health, Nature Medicine, 2025.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03395-8

Brink, N. et al. Impacts of heat exposure in utero on long-term health and social outcomes: a systematic review, BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 2024.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12884-024-06512-0

Lin, Q. et al. Heat wave exposure during pregnancy and neurodevelopmental delay in young children: A birth cohort study, Environmental Research, 2025.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935124024459

UNICEF. Beat the Heat, 2024.
https://www.unicef.org/eca/reports/beat-heat-2024

UNICEF. Nearly a quarter of a billion children’s schooling was disrupted by climate crises in 2024, 2025.
https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/nearly-quarter-billion-childrens-schooling-was-disrupted-climate-crises-2024-unicef

World Bank. Choosing Our Future: Education for Climate Action, 2024.
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/17ee7c0c-d176-4061-a871-1aea8568f30e