Imagine a childhood defined not by laughter and play, but by the relentless burden of fetching water – a heartbreaking reality for girls like Neela in coastal Bangladesh. Climate change isn't just an environmental issue there; it's stealing girlhoods, one heavy pitcher at a time.
We met Neela in Kamarkhola, a quiet village nestled within the Khulna's coastal region of Dacope. She was just 10 years old, walking home along a narrow dirt path, not with a schoolbag, but a water pitcher pressed firmly against her side. The weariness in her eyes spoke volumes, but her steady pace revealed a routine she knew all too well.
"I've been doing this for three years," Neela shared, a spark of pride momentarily illuminating her face. "The water near our home – our small ponds and local sources – it's not safe to drink. It's mostly salty. So we have to walk three or four miles to get clean water from a community pond that has a filter."
Three times a day, Neela makes this arduous journey, sacrificing precious hours that should be spent learning, playing, or simply resting. Think about that for a moment: a ten-year-old's life dictated by the desperate need for clean water.
To those unfamiliar with life in coastal Bangladesh, this might seem like an extreme measure. But here's where it gets controversial... saline intrusion is far more than an environmental concern; it's a pervasive health crisis. The World Health Organization recommends a daily salt intake of no more than five grams. Yet, in many of these coastal communities, residents consume an average of 16 grams of salt every single day from just two liters of drinking water. This isn't just about taste; it's about survival.
The consequences of prolonged exposure to saline water in coastal Bangladesh are devastating, particularly for women. It's linked to a host of health issues, including skin disorders, rashes, infections, urinary tract problems, and reproductive health complications. Over time, it can contribute to high blood pressure, kidney problems, and other chronic conditions, turning everyday tasks into physically taxing and hazardous burdens.
And this is the part most people miss: Families often reserve the limited supply of potable water for the men and children, leaving women to rely on saline water for cooking, washing clothes (including menstrual cloths), and most other household chores. Those unwilling to risk their health face the daily trek for clean water. In Neela's family, this responsibility falls squarely on her young shoulders.
Despite this heavy burden, Neela cherishes those fleeting moments of childhood. She calls certain days "happy" – mornings spent at school, afternoons playing with friends, returning home to a meal already prepared, a brief rest after lunch, a wander through the neighborhood, maybe even catching a glimpse of television at a neighbor's house.
"Most importantly," she whispered, "on such days, I don't have to do so many chores."
But when asked how often those "happy" days occur, her small smile faltered. At just ten years old, the idea of a carefree childhood is already fading away.
"My mother is sick," she explained softly, adding that her mother is pregnant with her third child. "So I have to take care of everything in the house."
Her list of responsibilities is long and daunting: cooking, washing dishes, feeding the livestock, caring for her younger brother who is also frequently ill, and, most urgently, walking miles each day to fetch water.
But here is a question that begs to be asked: Where is her father? Why isn't he helping his wife? Why does all of this responsibility fall on a ten-year-old girl?
The heartbreaking reality is that Neela's father, like many men in the village, has migrated to Khulna town in search of work. Climate change has steadily eroded livelihoods in the region, leaving few opportunities in or around the village.
A special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that by 2050, sea-level rise could force around 900,000 people in Bangladesh to migrate. By 2100, that number could reach 2.1 million – primarily internal migrants – with profound consequences for nutrition, housing, and employment. This mass displacement further strains already vulnerable communities, perpetuating a cycle of poverty and hardship.
Despite the immense pressure at home, Neela continues to attend school every weekday morning. But how long can she maintain this delicate balance? The future remains uncertain.
Neela has witnessed her mother's chronic ill-health, partly due to multiple miscarriages. And here's another devastating connection: climate change plays a direct role in this tragic reality. A World Bank study revealed that women in Bangladesh's coastal regions exposed to temperatures between 28°C and 32°C face a 25% higher risk of miscarriage.
"If her condition gets worse after delivering the third child," Neela said quietly, "my responsibilities will grow even more."
Even worse, she fears being married off to alleviate the financial burden on her family.
"That feels scarier than all the work I do now," she confessed. "If I am married, I will lose everyone here and go to a place where I know no one."
Neela's story is not unique. Sadly, it reflects a broader, deeply troubling trend.
As Laila Khondkar, a seasoned development worker, aptly puts it: "Extreme poverty leaves families with very few choices. In that situation, women – and especially girls – become the first scapegoats because they have the least agency."
In Satkhira's Kaliganj upazila, Rokeya was married at 14 – not by choice, but out of desperation. In coastal Bangladesh, prolonged exposure to saline water has become a serious reproductive health concern, especially for adolescent girls.
Furthermore, according to an ICCCAD report, girls often develop chronic skin problems after the ages of 18 to 20 due to prolonged exposure to salted water, which can also darken their skin. In many village communities, families are hesitant to marry off girls with skin issues or a darker complexion. As a result, parents often push their daughters into marriage between the ages of 10 and 15, fearing that waiting longer will make it harder to find a suitable match.
Rokeya's parents shared that fear.
Today, she lives in her husband's home, also in Shyamnagar, but in a less salinity-prone area of Burigoalini union. She is already a mother. Her days are consumed by cooking, cleaning, childcare, and household labor. The dreams she once held – of school, of play – have quietly faded away.
Studies show that over half of Bangladesh's coastal land is affected by salinity, and the risks for women and girls are severe. In some areas, adolescent girls resort to taking birth control pills or injections to suppress menstruation, while women in their 30s undergo voluntary hysterectomies – decisions driven not by choice, but by the sheer need to survive.
In Mongla, Bagerhat, a similar story unfolded during the COVID-19 pandemic, from March 2020, when schools were closed for a year and a half. Cyclone Amphan struck in May 2020, devastating homes and livelihoods already stretched to their breaking point.
Amidst these overlapping crises, 15-year-old Sumi was married off.
"I wanted to go back to school," she recalled softly. "But there was no school, no home, and no way to continue learning. My future felt uncertain, so they said I must marry."
Today, Sumi's classroom and playground have been replaced by household chores and care responsibilities – duties she never asked for.
Recent studies highlight the widespread nature of this crisis. According to the International Rescue Committee (IRC), climate-induced disasters have led to a 39% surge in child marriage across Bangladesh's disaster-prone coastal regions.
UNICEF reports that Bangladeshi children are among the most vulnerable globally to climate and environmental crises, while Save the Children ranks Bangladesh among the top ten countries at highest risk for climate-induced child marriage. The numbers are staggering and paint a grim picture of the future.
Studies also reveal that climate change can exacerbate gender-based violence. A BIGD report found that women and girls face harassment and abuse in overcrowded cyclone shelters and even while walking long distances for water, due to poor lighting and lack of separate spaces. To protect their daughters – or to preserve "family honor" – parents sometimes resort to early marriage, condemning girls to a lifetime of early pregnancy and domestic labor.
In October and November, we traveled across coastal districts in Khulna, Satkhira, and Bagerhat, speaking with hundreds of adolescent girls. Their stories echoed each other: water carried instead of books, classrooms replaced by kitchens, childhoods cut short by responsibility, illness, and fear.
A clear pattern emerged: climate change is not only reshaping coastlines and livelihoods, but also silently rewriting the lives of girls, pushing them out of school, into unpaid labor, and, far too often, into early marriage.
Though rarely discussed, the loss of girlhood in these regions is becoming one of climate change's most enduring and least visible consequences. This is a tragedy that demands our attention.
Experts working closely with affected communities emphasize that this crisis stems from deeply interconnected failures.
"Water scarcity, health risks, poverty, school disruption – none of these act alone," explains Shampa Goswami, Executive Director of the women welfare organization, Prerona. "They reinforce each other, and girls are the ones who pay the highest price."
She notes that while local governments and NGOs are trying to respond, their efforts are hampered by limited funding, weak coordination, and a shrinking civic space.
"We have the knowledge and the community's trust," she says. "But without sustained funding and institutional support, interventions remain short-term and fragile."
Shahariar Sadat, Deputy Executive Director of the Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ) at BRAC University, points to structural and institutional gaps that consistently undermine efforts to protect adolescent girls.
"Governments and NGOs have difficulty in terms of resources and utilization of existing resources," he explains. "The policy discourse is not friendly for adolescent girls and implementation of current policies are also very weak."
He stresses that providing support for adolescent girls requires specialized sensitivity and training.
"Support for girls needs special sensitivity, knowledge and understanding on a wide range of issues of physical and mental health," he says, noting that "Both Government and NGOs do not have that kind of knowledge and training at the grassroots level."
"There should be an urgent response team to deal with this issue who are equipped with knowledge, training and resources," Sadat adds.
International development worker Laila Khondkar, who has dedicated over two decades to child rights and policy, offers a different perspective. She argues that institutional interventions alone are unlikely to succeed unless community attitudes also evolve.
"Extreme poverty leaves families with very few choices," she says. "In that situation, women – and especially girls – become the first scapegoats because they have the least agency."
Khondkar explains that girls are often forced into excessive domestic labor, compelled to endure health complications in silence, or married off early to reduce household expenses.
"There is also a disturbing demand for underage girls in the so-called marriage market," she adds. "They are expected to do all kinds of work in their in-laws' homes, and early marriage usually involves little or no dowry, which becomes a major incentive for poor families."
Over the years, numerous initiatives have attempted to curb child marriage and alleviate women's vulnerability, but with limited success.
"We have seen many cases where a child marriage was stopped after authorities intervened," she says.
"But then, with the consent of both families, the marriage was quietly arranged in another area. In some coastal regions, families even travel by boat to the middle of a river to complete the ceremony. When law enforcement tries to intervene, everyone insists the girl is 18. People know very well that marrying off a girl before 18 is illegal – and yet they proceed knowingly."
"The socio-economic fabric of coastal communities is so complex that you cannot isolate a few problems and try to solve them separately," Khondkar adds.
In her view, meaningful change will require confronting and reshaping deeply ingrained social norms and mindsets – despite the country's growing conservatism and religious fundamentalism – which continue to perpetuate practices that put girls at risk.
Dr. Tania Haque of Dhaka University's Department of Women and Gender Studies echoes this concern, emphasizing that women's experiences of climate vulnerability vary significantly across regions and communities.
"Vulnerabilities of women, particularly of girl children, are not uniform across the country," she says. "What works in one context may completely fail in another."
Dr. Haque notes that Bangladesh still lacks a comprehensive, location-specific framework to address women's climate vulnerability.
"We have not yet been able to clearly identify the problems women face in different areas and design solutions accordingly," she says, adding that both national reform initiatives and global climate platforms have so far fallen short of addressing the lived realities of vulnerable Bangladeshi women.
"We need to understand which problems women face most acutely in which regions, and then develop responses tailored to those realities," Dr. Haque explains.
"Discrimination, exploitation and violence against women exist everywhere, but their underlying causes differ by location. The realities of women living on river islands are different from those on the plains; women in hilly areas face challenges distinct from those in drought-prone regions. Coastal women, too, experience a set of vulnerabilities unique to their environment. These differences must be analysed separately, and solutions must be designed accordingly."
Before we left Kamarkhola, we showed Neela the photos we had taken of her. She shyly smiled, delighted to see herself captured on camera. As we said our goodbyes, she whispered, "Please come back again sometime." We promised we might visit again, perhaps next year or the year after. Then we asked, gently, "Will we find you here when we return?"
Neela let out a long, quiet sigh. "Most probably not." And in that sigh echoed the quiet, heavy weight of childhoods lost to chores, water, and uncertainty.
Neela's story, and the stories of countless other girls in coastal Bangladesh, raise profound questions: What can be done to break this cycle of vulnerability? How can we empower these girls to reclaim their childhoods and build a brighter future? What are your thoughts? Share your perspectives in the comments below.
