Girls’ education and climate change: A critical review of the literature

Girls’ education is often positioned as a panacea for a host of the world’s problems. As the UK Prime Minister put it at the Global Education Summit: ‘This is the silver bullet, this is the magic potion, this is the panacea. This is the universal cure, this is the Swiss Army knife, complete with allen key and screwdriver and everything else that can solve virtually every problem that afflicts humanity’ (Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street, 2021). One such problem is climate change. Girls’ education is heralded for its ability to improve individuals’ and countries’ resilience, to instil environmental concern and behaviours, and to produce tomorrow’s green workers and leaders. Perhaps the most pervasive claimed benefit of girls’ education is of a relationship with slowed population growth and reduced emissions, which has led some to position educating girls as one of the most cost-effective climate mitigation strategies (Project Drawdown, n.d.). But are these claims true? If we educated every girl, would we slow, halt and eventually reverse climate change and literally save the world? And what does the narrative of girls’ education as climate change inoculation mean in the context of the learning, climate, and COVID-19 crises? This paper outlines the findings of a rigorous review into the research question: ‘what evidence is there in low and lower-middle income countries (LLMICs) of the pathways between girls’ education and climate change?’. The review includes 98 studies published from 2012 to January 2022. I offer a new conceptual framework which sets out multiple, layered pathways between girls’ education and climate change, and map included studies against this framework. An assessment of the quality of studies enables identification of areas of relative strength and weakness in the evidence base. The review highlights that while there is evidence of a relationship between girls’ education and climate change in LLMICs, the evidence base is limited and inconsistent. It exposes important gaps for widely assumed causal links of girls’ education on climate change and highlights the need for further, high quality research in diverse contexts.