Climate change is driving families on Indonesia’s northern Javanese coast toward child marriage as a survival strategy amid dwindling fish stocks and increasing economic hardships, two Mongabay reports show. Mongabay contributor Maulia Inka Vira Fendilla traveled to North Jakarta’s Kalibaru neighborhood in 2023 and met Janah and Jaroh, sisters who were both married off at the age of 16, the minimum legal age for marriage before 2019. (The government later raised it to 19.) Each earns 15,000-36,000 rupiah (about $1-$2) a day from processing the day’s catch from local fishers. “What I really want is to continue school, then work at a company, or to get out of here,” Janah says. “But I don’t know where to start.” According to Indonesian government data, the number of married adolescent girls is going down. But a 2020 report by UNICEF finds that one in nine women aged 20-24 in Indonesia was married before the age of 18. Mongabay found that a combination of environmental degradation, dwindling fish stocks due to overfishing, and the impacts of climate change contributed to marriage at an early age. Previous Mongabay reports have also documented how fishers along the northern coast of Java have been sailing farther out to sea to catch enough fish due to overfishing. “When the income of fishing families decreases due to climate change, they will tend to look for a shortcut by marrying off their daughters at an early age,” Susan Herawati, secretary-general of Indonesian NGO People’s Coalition for Fisheries Justice (KIARA), tells Mongabay. A follow-up Mongabay video , reported by Lusia Arumingtyas and filmed by Rizky Maulana Yanuar in 2024, shows a similar situation in North Jakarta’s Cilincing area. A green mussel fisher named Arifudin tells Mongabay that catching mussels is getting more challenging, in part due to climate change, […]