By: Christina Kwauk and Amanda Braga

Editor’s Note: This blog is the first of a four-part series related to a new paper on girls’ education and climate change. The following piece provides an overview of the research and the forthcoming blogs will each examine one of the three platforms recommended in the paper.

Recent incidents of severe weather and flooding in Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, the United States, and the Caribbean are once again heightening anxiety about climate change. What is the human impact on climate change, and what are the most effective policies and programs for mitigating this impact? In our new paper, Three Platforms for Girls’ Education in Climate Strategies, we show evidence that educating girls is one of the most effective but overlooked ways to mitigate against climate change, and present three platforms on which actors can be a part of this pursuit.

Climate change exacerbates existing gender inequalities by affecting the most vulnerable and least skilled people, largely women and girls, most acutely. For example, girls are at greater risk of early marriage in times of weather-related crises, because their dowries can help ease the burden of scarce household resources. Girls are often also the first to be withdrawn from school or attend school less frequently during times of drought so that they can complete household responsibilities like fetching water.

Climate change exacerbates existing gender inequalities by affecting the most vulnerable and least skilled people, largely women and girls, most acutely.

Despite this, we are beginning to acknowledge the powerful role that investments in girls’ education can play in climate change adaptation and mitigation. Our study suggests that for every additional year of schooling a girl receives on average, her country’s resilience to climate disasters can be expected to improve by 3.2 points (as measured by the ND-GAIN Index, which calculates a country’s vulnerability to climate change in relation to its resilience).

Achieving gender equality and the Sustainable Development Goals requires multi-sectoral action, however, climate change strategies pursued by gender, education, and climate actors have remained largely confined to the sectors from which they stem. To address this gap, we lay out three specific platforms on which actors in these sectors can collaborate and support girls as agents of change in the pursuit of sustainable development and equitable climate action.

1. Promote girls’ reproductive rights

There is a clear link between higher levels of female education and lower rates of fertility. But, efforts focused solely on reducing fertility rates and stabilizing population growth are wrought with ethical issues. Instead, the global community must approach women’s reproductive health from a gender justice and rights-based perspective delivered through quality girls’ education programming.

Key to this convergence are efforts to connect actors like CARE and Plan International — organizations that focus on the rights and empowerment of women and girls through education and health — with population-health-environment (PHE) actors working on women’s reproductive health as a means to achieve population-based climate change mitigation strategies. In addition, climate financing mechanisms like the Adaptation Fund should include investments in girls’ and women’s reproductive rights and education as part of their policy mechanisms for building women’s climate resilience and adaptive capacity. Accountability mechanisms like the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) should also include it as part of their classification markers to track overseas development assistance going toward climate and gender action.