Climate Change and Child Marriage: A Desperate Exchange

Bangladesh is a horribly disaster-prone country. It is low-lying, consisting mainly of land that lies within a river delta. Susceptible to cyclones, extreme heat, land erosion, and floods — and even drought — the country is suffering disproportionately from climate change. On top of that, nearly 20 percent of the country lives below the poverty line. Converge these two miseries, and it is women and girls who are hit hardest.

More than half of girls in Bangladesh marry by the time they turn 18. Or, more accurately, more than half of them are married off by age 18. While dowries were outlawed in the country in 1980, the practice of paying a groom’s family for a daughter’s hand is widespread regardless. Climate change plays into this injustice because it is a threat multiplier; it will harm “the poorest and most vulnerable children first, hardest, and longest,” a UNICEF report found in 2016. And when incomes decline, families become desperate. Marrying off their girls can be a step toward easing this despondency.

Climate change, UNICEF wrote in 2016, “is undermining development opportunities, setting back progress already made, and actually exacerbating poverty and inequality.” In particular, the UNICEF report noted, “climate change is threatening to reverse development gains Bangladesh has achieved towards universal access to primary education, health services, safe water, as well as ending child marriage and child labor, and eradicating hunger and malnutrition.”

And Bangladesh is hardly alone in this predicament, which is prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where child marriage is most common and global warming is particularly consequential. The more the climate changes, the more catastrophes rage around the world, the more families turn to child marriage as an economic boon for the family. A child is either sold with a dowry — an amount of money given to the groom’s family — or comes with a “bride price,” where the groom’s family pays the bride’s. Either way, girls' families benefit. Even when paying a dowry, by giving over their daughters, families have one fewer mouth to feed.

“Marrying a child is perceived as a coping strategy in response to the loss of assets and income after crises such as droughts and floods,” the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) wrote in 2021.

UNFPA pointed to a lack of resources as a “key driving factor” for child marriage. Girls who come from impoverished families in the lowest fifth of national incomes are more than twice as likely to marry before they are 18, as compared to the wealthiest fifth of families. And, of course, climate change and natural disasters worsen already existing inequalities by destroying livelihoods, whether they be farming or fishing, or even tourism as shorelines erode.

Child marriage as a consequence of climate change has been recorded in places like Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Kenya, and Malawi. Indonesia is also a country of concern when it comes to child marriage and the exacerbating effects of global warming.

In Indonesia, global warming, which brings ocean acidification, has depleted fish stocks, straining livelihoods that depend on fishing. With that comes greater poverty, and with that comes an increase in child marriage.

While organizations note that further research is necessary on this critical issue, the fact that the human rights of children are disproportionately impacted needs addressing right now.