© Plan International
Climate change is a global emergency, and its consequences fall hardest on those already most vulnerable. In the recent floods in Nepal, one image captured this reality: a mother stumbling to higher ground, two children in tow, mere seconds from the violent rush of floodwater. It’s the kind of image that stays with you, a stark reminder of who pays the highest price when disaster strikes.
But the devastation doesn’t end there. What happens after the floodwaters recede?
An estimated 200 million adolescent girls living in low-resource settings face heightened climate-related risks, threatening their education, safety and future opportunities.1
The scale of the disruption is not hypothetical. UNICEF’s most recent analysis found that in 2025 alone, climate hazards disrupted schooling for more than 171 million students worldwide, with girls disproportionately affected.2
Climate change doesn’t create new inequalities. It multiplies the ones already there. Often described as a “threat multiplier,” it exposes people who are already at risk to greater danger while, at the same time, stripping away their capacity to cope. Water scarcity, food insecurity, fragile health systems, gender-based violence: in each of these crises, women and girls tend to bear the heaviest burden.
Take a girl living in a society where gender inequality is already part of her daily life. A climate event doesn’t just disrupt her world; it raises the stakes on every disadvantage she already faces. In a drought, for instance, clean water becomes harder to reach. Fetching it, long her responsibility, as it is for women and girls across much of the world, now takes longer, requires her to travel further and carries greater risks to her safety.
Food security tells us a similar story. Women are often central to how a household grows, gathers or manages food, so when a climate shock hits, that responsibility doesn’t disappear. It grows. Girls may be among the first to be pulled out of school to cut costs or contribute to household labour.
When a community faces a severe climate event, the resulting increase in stress and insecurity can also lead to a greater risk of sexual and gender-based violence, child and forced marriage, and even human trafficking.
At every juncture, the burden on women and girls increases while their capacity to adapt diminishes. Their reliance on natural resources, public services and infrastructure can make adapting to a climate event more difficult, particularly when they have little access to, or control over, those resources.
Unless something is done, this inequality begins to feed on itself. Climate events place greater burdens on girls, reducing their time in education and diminishing their future economic opportunities, with consequences that can reverberate through the next generation. It is not simply a linear progression of inequality, but a cyclical one.
So, what is the solution?
It begins with acknowledging these inequalities and putting in place responses that integrate gender into climate policy and include women and girls in the decisions that affect them. For girls, education is key.
But keeping girls in school cannot be seen in isolation. When a climate event closes a clinic or cuts a community off, girls can lose access to sexual and reproductive health services just as risks of violence, early marriage and unintended pregnancy are rising. The report finds that girls whose schooling is disrupted are twice as likely to marry before 18 or experience an unintended pregnancy. Protecting girls’ education therefore also means protecting their health and safety, while addressing the economic pressures that can push families towards harmful coping strategies.3
That same girl, whose education may have been disrupted by a climate event in her community, can, when she returns to school, gain the tools, knowledge and confidence to tackle environmental challenges.
She may learn how to help her family recover more quickly from climate events and better understand the risks associated with them. She may become empowered to help lead her community’s response and, ultimately, become involved in the decisions and governance that shape its future.
A girl studying STEM may one day help design renewable energy projects and green initiatives. She may contribute to projects that provide greater access to energy, something integral to her community’s development, while helping to strengthen the position of women within that community.
Keeping girls in school is itself a climate adaptation strategy. Education creates opportunity; opportunity strengthens economic independence; and economic independence gives women and girls greater power over the decisions that shape their lives.
The economic consequences are significant too. A 2018 World Bank study found that limited educational opportunities for girls, and barriers to completing 12 years of education, cost countries between US$15 trillion and US$30 trillion in lost lifetime productivity and earnings.4
When girls are equipped not only to withstand the consequences of climate change, but to participate in shaping the response to it, the benefits extend far beyond the individual girl. They reach her family, her community and, ultimately, the generations that follow.