Educating Girls: The Overlooked Solution to Climate Change

Oct 12, 2021 | T. Shawn Taylor
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Addressing a global challenge as complex as climate change demands a full suite of solutions and actors, but one powerful intervention is widely overlooked: educating girls. Education gives girls the skills and knowledge to respond to climate-related disasters and to the changing resource landscapes around them. The contributions of educated girls to their communities increases a region’s overall resilience to climate shocks. 

Educated girls grow up to be women who participate fully in society and take on leadership roles. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that female political leaders are especially effective in creating environmental protection measures and more likely to ratify climate protective laws and treaties. And projections from a raft of international organizations including the United Nations and the World Bank indicate that education coupled with family planning and reproductive rights has a dramatic impact on population growth and carbon emissions.