Essay by Eric Worrall
Maybe if mom or dad had a high income oil or gas job they wouldn’t have to marry off the kids to strangers.
Climate change becoming a major driver of child marriage across Asia and the Pacific
Topic:Climate Change
By Claire Campbell…
Runa was 15 when she married a man she had never met before.
Cyclone Remal had ripped through her camp in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar region, killing her family’s chickens and ducks, which were the source of both their food and income.
Runa’s mother, who had become the sole income earner after her husband died a year earlier, then lost weeks of labouring work due to the natural disaster.
She could no longer financially support Runa, now 17, and her three brothers.
“She felt she had no choice but to arrange my marriage,” Runa told the ABC.
…
Climate change is now believed to be a leading contributor to more frequent and younger nuptials.
…
The problem is clearly economic hardship, not climate change.
Natural disasters may have contributed to that hardship, but fossil fuel driven economic development would help these people more than building a few wind turbines. Rich people don’t have to marry the kids to strangers, to ensure they have enough to eat.
