By Keya Debnath
Hafiza Khatun’s story began on a morning she would never forget. Living in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district, she helplessly watched as the embankment that once protected her village from the encroaching sea gave way. Saltwater rushed in, swallowing crops and homes, leaving Hafiza’s family with nothing. Her husband, once a betel leaf farm manager, lost his job overnight. With no way to support his family, he joined a group of men risking a dangerous journey by boat to Malaysia, hoping to find work. Left behind, Hafiza juggled multiple jobs as a domestic worker and farm laborer while her eldest son helped, and her two younger children stayed home, unable to attend school. Food was scarce, and illness became a constant shadow.
Hafiza’s story is not an isolated tragedy. It reflects a looming crisis in South Asia, where climate change is displacing millions, fracturing families, and disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable. According to the World Bank, over 13 million Bangladeshis could be displaced by rising sea levels alone by 2050, with more than 40 million people across South Asia expected to migrate internally due to climate impacts.
But these numbers hide a harsher truth: the burden of climate change falls heaviest on women and children. Women and children are not only more likely to die during disasters—up to 14 times more likely, according to UNDP—but also face longer-term consequences: child marriage, domestic violence, and lifelong poverty.
When men leave to seek income elsewhere, women like Hafiza are left to hold the household together, often with no support and limited rights. In addition to managing farms and feeding children, women face greater food insecurity, heavier workloads, and heightened risks of exploitation. In the Indian Sundarbans, for instance, poverty and displacement after Cyclone Aila forced some women into exploitative labor and, in some cases, sex work to survive.
Children suffer, too. Girls are pulled from school to care for siblings or help on farms, trading their futures for their families’ immediate survival. UNICEF estimates that over 23 million children in South Asia are at risk of climate-related educational disruption by 2050. According to a 2021 Save the Children report, displaced children in Bangladesh show alarming rates of PTSD, anxiety, and depression, particularly among girls pressured to grow up too fast.
The collapse of community networks compounds this trauma. In Nepal’s Terai region and Pakistan’s Sindh province, slow-onset disasters like drought and river erosion quietly redraw migration patterns, splitting families and dissolving the kinship systems that once provided social and emotional safety nets.
And yet, despite the depth of this crisis, climate policies in South Asia rarely center on the lived experiences of women and children. Instead, they often focus on physical infrastructure or economic displacement, overlooking the gendered realities of migration and recovery. But women and children are not merely victims. They are also frontline responders, caretakers, organizers, and agents of resilience. Hafiza, like so many others, adapts daily, stretching scarce resources, navigating informal markets, and keeping her family afloat. Their leadership and insights must shape our response.
We all lose when a mother must choose between feeding her children and sending them to school. Climate change isn’t just melting glaciers—it’s melting futures, especially for those with the least power and the most significant burden.
If we want a just transition, our policies must listen to and be led by those already navigating the storm: the women and children of climate change’s frontlines.
Reader Question:
What steps can we take to ensure climate policies are shaped by the lived experiences and leadership of women and children on the frontlines of climate change?