Climate change is eroding safety nets, accelerating child marriage in South Asia

In drought-hit Bundelkhand, girls wake at dawn to collect water before the heat becomes unbearable. In flood-scarred Sindh, displaced families live for months in makeshift camps, where security is fragile and futures uncertain. Along the saline coastlines of Bangladesh, as rising seas encroach on land and livelihoods, girls quietly disappear from schools, often never to return.

Across South Asia, early and forced marriage is taking on new dimensions. While often explained through the lens of tradition or poverty, the practice is increasingly shaped by a force largely absent from most climate adaptation frameworks: the accelerating environmental crisis.

Globally, the scale of this intersection is growing. A 2023 report by Save the Children found that nearly two-thirds of all child marriages already take place in regions facing above-average climate risk.

Nearly 30 million girls today live in countries classified as climate-and-child-marriage hotspots. By 2050, that figure is projected to rise to almost 40 million, an increase of 33%. Without intervention, environmental disruption may not just threaten girls’ futures – it will predetermine them.

Nowhere is this more visible than in South Asia, a region home to one-third of the world’s child brides and more than 750 million people affected by climate disasters in the past two decades. Here, early marriage is...

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