Climate Change & Child Marriage [CRANK Notes]

10 Apr, 2025

Climate Change & Child Marriage? And, how are they interlinked?

At the core, climate change exacerbates vulnerability. This includes economic, social, and environmental stresses that push families, especially in already marginalized communities toward harmful coping mechanisms like child marriage. A few ways this link plays out:

1. Economic insecurity

• Loss of livelihoods due to droughts, floods, or crop failure pushes families into poverty. Early marriage may be seen as a way to reduce the number of dependents or to secure a "bride price" (as mentioned in some of the case studies).
• Food insecurity, often worsened by climate shocks, is another major trigger (see the UNFPA/WFP brief attached below).

2. Displacement & Migration

• Climate-induced migration (e.g. from flooded coastal regions like Jakarta) leads to loss of social protection, breakdown of community structures, and increased vulnerability to exploitation. Girls on the move may be more at risk of forced or early marriage.

3. Gender Norms and Patriarchy

• Climate stress often reinforces existing gender inequalities—when resources are scarce, families may prioritize boys' education and marry off girls.
• Disasters can also increase gender-based violence, adding another layer of vulnerability for adolescent girls.

I attended a meeting today [10th April, 2025]:

CRANK research meeting: The interlinkages between climate change and child marriage – Learning from emerging evidence and practice. Hosted by Girls Not Brides.

Following are some resources that were shared by panelists and participants:

1. CEDAW Informal Briefing: THE NEXUS BETWEEN CLIMATE CHANGE AND CHILD MARRIAGE by Mohinder Watson, PhD MPH; Founder, Action on Child, Early and Forced Marriage; UN Representative, International Council of Women

2. PROCEEDINGS OF AN INTERNATIONAL EXPERT GROUP MEETING EXPLORING THE NEXUS BETWEEN CLIMATE CHANGE AND CHILD MARRIAGE: WHAT DOES THE EVIDENCE TEL L US? Convened by Action on Child, Early, and Forced Marriage by Mohinder Watson, PhD, MPH and Jacques Mauel, PhD

3. Child Marriage and Environmental Crises: An Evidence Brief by UNFPA ESARO

4. Pope, D. H., McMullen, H., Baschieri, A., Philipose, A., Udeh, C., Diallo, J., & McCoy, D. (2022). What is the current evidence for the relationship between the climate and environmental crises and child marriage? A scoping review. Global Public Health, 18(1).

5. Braving All Odds: A Mother's Fight Against Poverty and Child Marriage by UNFPA

6. On Jakarta’s vanishing shoreline, climate change seen abetting child marriages by Maulia Inka Vira Fadilla

7. Palmer, A., Danioko, A., & Koski, A. (2025). The effect of extreme weather events on the frequency of child marriage: A systematic review of the evidence. Sustainable Development, 33(2), 1686–1699.

8. Technical Brief_Interlinkages of Child Marriage and Food Insecurity by UNFPA & WFP

9. Subramanian, R. R. (2024). Gate-Cane: (Un)tying the knots between climate, cane, and early marriage in rural India. Climate and Development, 17(1), 76–89.

10. Climate Change: Impact on Adolescent Girls by UNICEF and Karama

11. The Climate Brides Map. The map is currently available in both English & Hindi. You can reach out to the team to suggest more languages.

Some of my questions, notes, and thoughts as I listened to the panelists:

1. Should climate-related migration trigger special laws for at-risk girls (similar to those of refugees)? Should legal systems open up to recognise climate-induced child marriage risks as ground for asylum? Currently, the 1951 Refugee Convention doesn’t include climate change as grounds for asylum. So, there's no legal category for a “climate refugee” under the 1951 Refugee Convention. This leaves families (especially in Small Island States, coastal deltas, or drought-prone zones) in legal limbo and girls are often the most invisible. Then again, can climate-induced child marriage be a ground for asylum or special humanitarian visas? How would legal systems handle proof of “climate-induced harm”? Are there examples where climate-related child marriage has been invoked in asylum or court proceedings? We could look into this?

2. Can robust disaster management for cyclones/floods by government and post-disaster social safety nets (cash incentives, crop, livelihood, education support, micro-loans) reduce risk of climate-induced child marriage? Have this ever worked? Or, has it been studied? Or, can it be a good point of study? Cyclones, floods, and droughts don’t just destroy homes but they collapse protective social systems like schools, clinics, and community networks. This creates a vacuum where harmful practices like child marriage take root. But what if disaster relief and climate resilience programs were designed with girls at the center? Have governments or humanitarian agencies piloted programs that track child marriage rates post-disaster and intervene accordingly? What metrics are being used to measure "gender responsiveness" in disaster planning? Can climate financing (like through the Green Climate Fund) be tied to child marriage prevention outcomes?

3. Can gender-mainstreaming in climate-smart agriculture (empowering adult women with resources, land rights etc.) be helpful to fight the risk of child marriage? One of the panelists, Loretta Adowaa Asare, gave an affirmative answer to this question. Which makes sense. This is a powerful intersectional solution. If women gain land rights, access to climate-resilient crops, and leadership in climate response, it could:

• Improve household resilience.
• Delay or eliminate the economic drivers of child marriage.
• Empower women and girls in the long term. Then again, can land reforms realistically reach the most marginalized (lower caste, ethnic minority, or indigenous) women? Will empowering adult women trickle down to protect adolescent girls—or will marriage still be used as a “strategy” for stability? What about girl-centered agro-initiatives—can adolescent girls be agents in climate adaptation efforts?

4. Intersectional and region-specific approaches to combat this issue of child marriage that is induced by climate change risks. Will they work? There was one point that shed light on how legal and norm changes do not have any combating effect, hence the question. Which, for me, was a very astute observation from the panel; legal bans alone don’t work in changing deep-rooted social practices, especially when material conditions are worsening. Intersectional approaches (considering caste, ethnicity, rural/urban divide, age, etc.) make responses more effective and tailored. Example:

• Girls in the Sahel face both desertification and child marriage risks.
• In coastal Bangladesh, families marry off daughters fearing cyclone shelters aren't safe for girls. What happens when “climate-smart” responses clash with local cultural logics or inadvertently reinforce existing inequalities? Decolonizing climate and development narratives. Investing in knowledge held by rural women, adolescent girls, and local activists. Will this work? Is this the key? (Which takes us back to my gender-mainstreaming point.)

5. It was mentioned climate change doesn’t cause child marriage directly—but it worsens all the conditions that make it more likely. This is a crucial nuance. Climate crises intensify poverty, displacement, gender inequality, and social breakdown. All known drivers of child marriage. So rather than a single causal pathway, it’s a synergistic web of vulnerabilities. My doubt is are we oversimplifying the link when we say climate “causes” child marriage? Could that dilute accountability from socio-cultural structures that are already complicit? Could this framing risk shifting attention or blame away from patriarchal norms and poverty, to a “neutral” force like the climate? This is just a doubt brewing in my mind.

6. What if child marriage were included in climate risk indices? What if every National Adaptation Plan had to report on child marriage data? Bangladesh has done it. What if we understood the climate crisis not only as an environmental emergency, but as a crisis of girlhood?