Teenage pregnancy & intimate partner violence also grew after drought episodes
Photo for representation: iStock Natural disasters, which are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change, affect women and children disproportionately. Events such as droughts have significant direct and indirect implications on their health and livelihoods.
A new study released by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development recently estimated that exposure to major droughts increases the likelihood of being underweight in women by 35 per cent, and child marriage in girls by 37 per cent.
Teenage pregnancy and intimate partner violence were also disproportionately suffered by women, with the odds increasing by 17 per cent and 50 per cent, respectively, after a severe drought.
The research led by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation was a collaborative endeavor with Karmannya Counsel, a not-for-profit, and the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, a non-governmental trade association and advocacy group. Data was sourced from district-level climate vulnerability exposure scores published in 2021 by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) and the National Family Health Survey, 2019-21 to make the assessment.
According to CEEW, out of 640 districts in India, 349 districts witnessed droughts and 183 were vulnerable to more than one disaster. They based this on 50 years of climate data. In the NFHS-5, 54 per cent of women and their children below the age of five belong to districts with high exposure to hydro-met hazards in 2021.
Farmers in the country, who are predominantly women, are at risk as their livelihood is climate-vulnerable, underscoring the complex interplay in drought-affected regions between environmental factors and social dynamics. Occupational heat exposure poses challenges for female farmers’ productivity and well-being.
Increased workload in a drought leads to irregular food consumption and unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as skipping meals, causing severe malnutrition in women farmers, making them underweight.
Further, research revealed that heatwaves increase mortality rates; annually 116 deaths can be attributed to the phenomenon in India. Pregnant women bear the brunt as well, with complications such as preterm delivery, gestational hypertension and eclampsia. Pre-eclampsia is a condition that affects some pregnant women in the second half of their pregnancy. It includes raised blood pressure, proteinuria, or signs of kidney or liver damage. They face heightened risk during disasters, with limited access to prenatal care and childbirth facilities.
Women also disproportionately face consequences of frequent floods when health services are halted, oftentimes resulting in disruption to women’s sexual and reproductive health. Extreme weather events additionally compound societal factors such as caste, affecting relief and recovery reach.
Disparities emerge in accessing sanitation facilities in shelters, the paper titled How climate change impacts women and children across agroecological zones in India emphasised, adding that these challenges disrupt education and increase the risk of child marriages in flood-prone areas.
Between 2000 and 2016, nearly 17,671 children died in five major natural disasters. Similarly, 6.8 million children lost their lives after 2019’s tropical cyclone Fani. The 2015-2016 drought that affected 10 states impacted 37 million children under 5, the paper said.
From 2013-22, the total number of heatwave days experienced annually by children under the age of one was 43 per cent greater than during 1986-2005 in India, the study said.
As children have high metabolic rates and spend more time outdoors doing physical activities, they are extremely vulnerable to heatwaves as they are exposed to heatstroke, burns and even air pollution.
Exposure in-utero (in the first trimester) to drought increased children’s probability of being underweight by 1.7 per cent and severely underweight by 2.1 per cent, as the mother’s food intake was limited.
Further, undernutrition conditions such as stunting, wasting and underweight in infants and children under the age of five have also been attributed to droughts in some empirical studies.
The fact that children and pregnant women suffer health and nutritional impacts as a result of climate change found mention in the Sixth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report urged researchers and practitioners to support policymakers to work towards mitigating the effects of climate change on human health .
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