A childhood carried in water pitchers: Climate change and lost girlhoods in coastal Bangladesh
In coastal Bangladesh, saline intrusion is more than an environmental problem — it has become a daily threat to health. Children, especially girls, often walk long distances to fetch drinking water, leaving little time for school or play
It was an ordinary afternoon in Kamarkhola, a village tucked into Khulna's coastal belt of Dacope, when we met Neela, a 10-year-old girl walking home along a narrow earthen path. She was not carrying a school bag, but a water pitcher rested against her side. She looked tired, but the steadiness of her steps made it clear this was nothing new.
"I've been doing this for three years," Neela said after some initial ice-breaking, a hint of pride lighting up her eyes. "The water near our home [small ponds and local waterbodies] isn't safe to drink. Most of it is salty. So we have to walk three or four miles to fetch clean water from a community pond that has a filter machine."
Neela makes this trip at least three times a day, consuming hours that would otherwise belong to schoolwork, play or simply rest.
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To outsiders, such effort may seem excessive. But in coastal Bangladesh, saline intrusion is not merely an environmental concern — it is a daily health risk. The World Health Organization recommends a maximum intake of five grams of salt per day. Yet in many coastal areas, residents consume an average of 16 grams daily from just two litres of drinking water.
Prolonged exposure to saline water in coastal Bangladesh has been linked to a range of health issues for women, including skin disorders, rashes, and infections, as well as urinary tract infections and reproductive health problems. Over time, it can also contribute to high blood pressure, kidney issues, and other chronic conditions, making daily chores physically taxing and hazardous to their long-term health.
For cooking, washing clothes — including menstrual cloths — and most household tasks, families rely on saline water, often reserving scarce potable water for husbands and children. Those unwilling to take the health risks must walk miles every day. In Neela's family, that responsibility falls on her.
'Happy days' and a shrinking childhood
Despite the burden, Neela still clings to small moments of childhood. On days she calls "happy", she goes to school in the morning, plays with friends, returns home to a prepared meal, rests briefly after lunch, wanders around the neighbourhood, and sometimes watches television at a neighbour's house.
"Most importantly, on such days, I don't have to do so many chores," she whispered.
But when asked how often those days come, her small smile faltered. At just 10, the idea of a carefree childhood was already slipping away.
"My mother is sick," she said softly, mentioning 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: cooking, washing dishes, feeding livestock, caring for her younger brother who also remains sick every now and then, and, most urgently, walking miles every day for water.
But where is her father? Why is he not helping his wife? Why does all this responsibility fall on his 10-year-old daughter?
Turns out, Neela's father does not live at home. Like most adult men in the village, he has migrated to Khulna town in search of work. Climate change has steadily eroded livelihoods in this region, leaving little employment in or around the village.
A special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that by 2050, sea-level rise could force around nine lakh people in Bangladesh to migrate. By 2100, the number could reach 21 lakh — mostly internal migrants — with profound consequences for nutrition, housing and employment.
Despite the strain at home, Neela continues to attend school every weekday morning. How long she can sustain this fragile balance remains uncertain.
Health, heat and the weight of responsibility
Neela has grown up watching her mother remain chronically unwell, in part due to multiple miscarriages. Climate change plays a direct role here as well. A World Bank study stated 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 softly, "my responsibilities will grow even more."
Worse still, she fears she may soon be married off to ease the financial pressure on her family.
"That feels scarier than all the work I do now," she said. "If I am married, I will lose everyone here and go to a place where I know no one."
Neela's story is not an isolated one.
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 the age of 14 — not by choice, but out of fear. In coastal Bangladesh, prolonged exposure to saline water has become a serious reproductive health concern, particularly for adolescent girls.
Also, according to a ICCCAD report, after the ages of 18 to 20, girls often start experiencing chronic skin problems due to prolonged exposure to salted water, which also darkens their skin. In village communities, many families are reluctant to marry off girls with skin issues or a darker complexion. As a result, parents often expect their daughters to marry between the ages of 10 and 15, fearing that waiting longer could create difficulties for them in the future.
Rokeya's parents thought so too.
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 filled with cooking, cleaning, childcare and household labour. The dreams she once held — of school and play — have quietly vanished.
When survival replaces choice
According to studies, over half of Bangladesh's coastal land is affected by salinity, and for women and girls, the risks are severe. In some areas, adolescent girls take birth control pills or injections to suppress menstruation, while women in their 30s undergo voluntary hysterectomies — decisions driven not by choice, but by survival.
Again, in Mongla, Bagerhat, the story unfolded differently but with equally devastating consequences. During the coronavirus pandemic from March 2020, schools remained closed for one and a half years. Simultaneously, Cyclone Amphan also struck in May 2020, destroying homes and livelihoods already stretched thin.
Amid the 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.
A national pattern
Recent studies underline the scale 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.
Studies also show that climate change can increase gender-based violence. According to a BIGD report, 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 daughters — or preserve "family honour" — parents sometimes marry them off early, pushing girls into a lifetime of early pregnancy and domestic labour.
In October and November this year, we travelled across coastal districts in Khulna, Satkhira and Bagerhat, speaking with hundreds of adolescent girls. Their stories echoed one another — of water carried instead of books, of classrooms replaced by kitchens, of childhoods shortened by responsibility, illness and fear.
What emerged was a stark pattern: climate change is not only reshaping coastlines and livelihoods, but also quietly rewriting the lives of girls, pushing them out of school, into unpaid labour and, too often, into early marriage.
Though rarely discussed, the loss of girlhood (childhood of girls, as per Save the Children) in these regions is becoming one of climate change's most enduring and least visible consequences.
Why interventions fall short
Experts working closely with affected communities say the crisis is the result of deeply interconnected failures.
"Water scarcity, health risks, poverty, school disruption — none of these act alone," said Shampa Goswami, Executive Director of women welfare organisation, Prerona. "They reinforce each other, and girls are the ones who pay the highest price."
She said that while local governments and NGOs are trying to respond, efforts are falling short due to limited funding, weak coordination, and shrinking civic space.
"We have the knowledge and the community's trust," she said. "But without sustained funding and institutional support, interventions remain short-term and fragile."
Institutional gaps and policy failures
Shahariar Sadat, Deputy Executive Director of Centre for Peace and Justice (CPJ) at BRAC University, pointed to structural and institutional gaps that continue to undermine efforts to protect adolescent girls.
"Governments and NGOs have difficulty in terms of resources and utilisation of existing resources," he said. "The policy discourse is not friendly for adolescent girls and implementation of current policies are also very weak."
He stressed that support for adolescent girls requires specialised sensitivity and training.
"Support for girls needs special sensitivity, knowledge and understanding on a wide range of issues of physical and mental health," he said, 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 added.
Changing mindsets, not just laws
International development worker Laila Khondkar, who has worked on child rights and policy for more than two decades, offered a different perspective, arguing that institutional interventions alone are unlikely to succeed unless community attitudes also change.
"Extreme poverty leaves families with very few choices," she said. "In that situation, women — and especially girls — become the first scapegoats because they have the least agency."
Khondkar explained that girls are often pushed into excessive domestic labour, forced 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 added. "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, she noted, numerous initiatives have attempted to curb child marriage and reduce women's vulnerability — but with limited success.
"We have seen many cases where a child marriage was stopped after authorities intervened," she said.
"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 added.
In her view, meaningful change will require confronting and reshaping social norms and mindsets — despite the country's growing conservatism and religious fundamentalism — which continue to reinforce practices that put girls at risk.
Why location matters
Dr Tania Haque of Dhaka University's Department of Women and Gender Studies echoed similar concern, emphasising 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 said. "What works in one context may completely fail in another."
Dr Haque noted 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 said, 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 explained.
"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.
This story has been produced with support from Internews' Earth Journalism Network.
