CRANK research meeting: The interlinkages between climate change and child marriage – Learning from emerging evidence and practice

PICTURED: Supported by her uncle, his boat and the UNICEF/Jagorani Chakra Foundation “Let Us Learn Project”, 10-year-old Tawhida continues her education despite heavy and prolonged flooding in Shantiganj, Bangladesh, 2024. Almost one in three girls in this region marry or enter a union before age 18 (Girls Not Brides). Keeping girls in education is one of the best ways to prevent child marriage. Photo: © UNICEF/UNI636920/Himu.

The details

The first CRANK research meeting of 2025 focused on the interlinkages between climate change and child marriage.

In this meeting – held to coincide with the 58th Session of the Commission on Population and Development – we discussed emerging evidence, practice and strategies, and their implications for prevention, adaptation and response. Taking a holistic approach to wellbeing, we also considered the links between child marriage, food insecurity and climate-induced displacement, and social protection, education, health and social norms.

You can now access all the meeting resources – notes, presentations and recordings – on the meeting page. The notes include our key takeaways, highlight research gaps and share additional resources and tools. This time, we also include a new four-page summary, which includes evidence-based recommendations for action.

Why focus on climate change and child marriage

We know:

• For every 10% change in rainfall due to climate change, child marriage increases 1%.[1]
• Girls and adolescents are the most severely impacted by both issues.

But:

• Climate change and child marriage are often addressed in isolation. Girls and adolescents – including those who are, or have been, married (ever-married girls) – are rarely represented in climate policy.
• Responses are often short-term, only dealing with the period immediately after climate shock or marriage and not the longer-term consequences.
• The impact of climate change on child marriage is indirect and varies by context.

Key takeaways

• Environmental crises worsen known drivers of child marriage, but the impacts depend on local socio-cultural contexts. Pathways to child marriage – especially where there is little state social protection – include (direct and indirect) disruption to education, loss of livelihoods, displacement, increased threat of sexual violence, and local practices like bride price. Where dowry is predominant (like South Asia), environmental crisis leads to reductions in child marriage; where bride price is predominant (like West, Central, East and Southern Africa) crisis leads to increases in child marriage.
• We need to take a lifecycle approach to understand, prevent and respond to climate change and child marriage beyond the moment of marriage or disaster. Attempts to quantify the impact of climate-related events on child marriage are mixed, depending on time period and scale. Studies looking at short-term (proximal) effects of weather “shocks” show less impact than those looking at medium and longer-term (distal) and cumulative effects. Studies looking at national data found droughts did not have large-scale impacts on child marriage prevalence in most countries. Climate-induced displacement – before, during or after climate-related shocks – may mean the impacts are felt in another location, and at a later date. A lifecycle approach considers drivers and impacts from early warning systems to long-term consequences (e.g. health, education, labour market participation).
• It is important to engage in drafting policy documents – including on climate, gender, education and social protection – at the national level to ensure they address the underlying drivers and long-term impacts of climate vulnerability and child marriage. Engaging at this level is essential to deliver a comprehensive, gender-transformative response – from risk assessments to intervention design, implementation and measurement – that centres girls’ and women’s lived experiences. Interventions must be quantified for funding, including by multilateral climate financing mechanisms. Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are due in September 2025.
• Working in partnership at different levels is essential to deliver coordinated, cross-sectoral interventions that reduce the climate-related economic and social drivers of child marriage. This means engaging relevant ministries – like those for gender, social protection, education and agriculture – and service providers at the local level to deliver initiatives like school feeding and smart agriculture in areas vulnerable to food insecurity and/or with low school attendance and female labour market participation.
• Adolescent girl-centred community engagement – alongside support for education, livelihoods, and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) – can encourage parents to openly commit to their daughters’ education. They can also increase girls’ and mothers’ decision-making power. Creative communication that uses storytelling formats and materials can help translate research into grassroots action, and bring community voices, experiences, negotiations and adaptation strategies into more nuanced research, policy and news stories.

Speakers and areas of discussion

The meeting was moderated by Dr. Mohinder Watson, Researcher and Main United Nations Geneva Representative, International Council of Women. Speakers included:

• Chiagozie Udeh, Programme Specialist Climate Adaptation and Innovation, UNFPA ESARO. Chiagozie will be drawing from this a Pope et al scoping review What is the current evidence for the relationship between the climate and environmental crises and child marriage? and a UNFPA evidence brief on child marriage and environmental crisis.
• Sajeda Amin, Senior Research Advisor, Sajida Foundation. Sajeda will draw from this article: Climate change and child marriage: The evidence from Bangladesh.
• Loretta Adowaa Asare, Student of Bonn University Applied Social Sciences. Loretta will be drawing on this article: The consequences of climate change: A qualitative analysis of early girl child marriage as an informal adaptation strategy among rural communities in Northern Ghana.
• Ramatoulaye Dieye, Regional Gender Advisor, World Food Programme. Ramatoulaye will be drawing on this technical brief: Interlinkages of child marriage and food insecurity
• Reetika Revathy Subramanian, Creator, Climate Brides. Check out the Climate Brides map, which highlights how climate risks in South Asia intensify the structural drivers of child marriage.
• Alissa Koski, social epidemiologist and Associate Professor at McGill University in Montreal, who will draw on their recent systematic review of the evidence: The effects of extreme weather events on the frequency of child marriage.

This CRANK research meeting was a space to consider and discuss:

• The implications of recent global and context-specific evidence for research, programming, advocacy and policymaking.
• Promising practice, innovative approaches and strategies to strengthen cross-sectoral interventions and policies.
• Evidence-based practices and learnings from CRANK community members on addressing these interlinkages.
• Research and evidence-based practice priorities moving forward.
• How to strengthen coordination and collaboration across diverse stakeholders and across multiple sectors.