Unseen Drivers of Climate Change and Early Marriage Narratives in Coastal Jakarta

Abstract

Environmental decline in North Jakarta, marked by rising temperatures, pollution, coastal flooding, and falling fish stocks, has intensified economic hardship for fishing families, sometimes coinciding with higher rates of early marriage as a perceived way to reduce household burdens. Using discourse analysis of archived reports and documentaries by Mongabay (2024) and Deutsche Welle (2025), this article examines how the two nature-conservation–oriented media outlets report on this issue, and argues that their narratives frequently frame early marriage as a direct and rational adaptation to climate change while portraying girls as passive victims of environmental loss. Such representations risk oversimplifying a complex social phenomenon and obscuring longstanding drivers of early marriage, including chronic poverty, unstable informal labor, limited access to secondary education, and deeply rooted gender and faith-based norms that shape family decision-making. By reducing early marriage to a linear consequence of ecological collapse, these narratives flatten local agency and overlook the intergenerational transmission of survival strategies that long predate current climate pressures. The article contends that climate stress functions less as an original cause than as an aggravating condition that intensifies existing vulnerabilities, pushing families to prioritize immediate survival over long-term investment in girls’ education. Through critical media analysis, this study highlights how victim-centered portrayals can inadvertently depoliticize poverty and normalize gendered sacrifice. It concludes that more context-sensitive reporting is needed, and that effective policy responses must focus on securing livelihoods, stabilizing coastal economies, and expanding educational access, rather than treating early marriage primarily as an environmental adaptation problem.