How Changing Climate Is Disrupting Education In Coastal Odisha

“I clearly remember that year--it was 2013, and Cyclone Phailin had struck in October,” Padmini, a resident of Odisha’s Ganjam district, says. "For us teenagers in the area, it was the first big cyclone in our memory. Our parents had seen the Super Cyclone of 1999, which caused great devastation, but for us Phailin was a difficult phase.”

“I was in tenth grade then. There was severe waterlogging in our village and all communication was disrupted. We couldn’t go to school or attend classes. Even when we ventured out for group studies, we had to carry our books on our heads because the water was neck-deep. For three months, there was no electricity, and we studied by candlelight.”

Padmini, a resident of Podampeta village which is dominated by the Telugu community, managed to clear her board exams despite the difficulties. She now holds a master’s degree in science and a bachelor’s in education, and works as a digital literacy trainer with VIEWS, a grassroots NGO focused on education. She also takes tuitions for children up to grade X.

Podampeta, which hugs the coast of the Bay of Bengal, bears the scars of climate change like an open wound. Once home to approximately 475 families, the village was swallowed steadily by the sea. And its people, mostly from the fishing community, were forced to move. Today, old Podampeta has the eerie feel of a ghost village, with crumbling homes clinging to the shore, their ruins strangled by creepers. Padmini’s is one of only two families that continue to stay there; the rest now live in New Podampeta, 2 km away.

With livelihoods upended, some families have turned to daily wage labour or even opted for migration. The invisible casualty has been children’s education--sidelined, overlooked, dismissed as just another ‘non-economic loss’.

Podampeta, a fishing village in Odisha’s Ganjam district, now lies in ruins after coastal erosion swallowed its homes.

Extreme weather events in Odisha

Coastal areas are more prone to the impacts of climate change including coastal erosion, climate-induced disasters and extreme weather events like heatwaves.

The National Disaster Management Authority noted that between 1891 and 1990, there were 262 cyclones (92 of them severe) in a 50-km strip above the east coast while the west coast saw 33 cyclones in that 100-year period, with 19 of them severe. Odisha, on India’s eastern coast, is no stranger to such vulnerabilities. Between 2018 and 2024 alone, the region has faced at least eight cyclonic storms, whether through direct landfalls or landfalls in the neighboring states of West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh. And about 25% of the state’s coastline is prone to erosion. These events have prompted repeated school closures across the state.

Extreme weather events such as heatwaves and excessive rainfall are also increasingly disrupting education. This year, schools began summer break on April 23, instead of the scheduled first week of May, due to dangerous heat levels. Similarly, unseasonal heavy rainfall has forced early school closures on multiple occasions, compounding learning losses across coastal districts.

School children cycle down a road flanked by flood-submerged fields in Kujang block of Jagatsinghpur district in Odisha.

“The impact of climate-change-driven extreme weather events has heightened vulnerabilities in coastal Odisha," says Umasankar Das, a weather scientist at the India Meteorological Department, New Delhi, who has worked extensively in Odisha. "Coastal erosion and sea-level rise amplify cyclone impacts, even when cyclones skirt the coast without making landfall. While overall rainfall remains similar, intense rainfall events have increased as rainy days decreased, creating uneven distribution.”

“Coastal areas suffer more from soaring temperatures than inland. Humidity combined with heat creates humid heat stress, making summers unbearable," Das points out. "Heatwave frequency shows an increase globally and in India due to climate change, and the combined impact of rising temperatures with humidity is undeniable. This year, heatwaves began in March, not the typical April-May onset, confirming hotter months.”

Humid heat inhibits the body’s ability to cool down through its natural mechanism of sweating, as IndiaSpend reported in May 2025. The threshold for declaration of a heatwave is also dependent on the same, but there are lower thresholds for coastal locations as compared to the plains, we had reported. Due to high humidity, there might be a reason to re-draft these guidelines.

Lessons from the pandemic and beyond

The Covid-19 pandemic serves as a grim reminder of how prolonged school closures can result in severe learning losses. Globally, students had missed 1.8 trillion hours of in-person school time since the pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns, a September 2021 report published by World Bank, UNESCO and UNICEF. The crisis had hit the most vulnerable in low- and middle-income countries the hardest, a report published the same month stated.

Frequent school closures due to climate-induced extreme weather events threaten a similar and potentially irreversible generational learning gap. A 2024 article in the journal Discover Sustainability studied the impact of natural disasters on education outcomes between 2004-05 and 2011-12 using the India Human Development Survey. The negative impact on educational attainment “may have long-term disruptive effects beyond immediate losses and may last through generations”, especially for the marginalised, the article said.

But, as we said, these effects seldom make it to literature around the impacts of changing climate. Of 15 review articles on the economic impacts of climate change published since 2010, only three mention the impacts of climate change on education, according to a 2024 article in the The World Bank Research Observer. In addition to precipitating school closures, extreme weather also negatively impacts education outcomes through health, nutrition, poverty, and fragility, the article noted.

“Affected families often cannot afford their children’s education-related expenses, including school uniforms and transportation costs,” a 2023 policy brief from the United Nations University found. Families lose their identification documents, which complicates school admissions after climate-induced migrations.

Further, disruptions could also lead to drop-outs, especially in the secondary and higher grades, when children take up paid work to substitute family incomes. Adolescent girls are susceptible to the risk of early marriage, trafficking, and gender-based sexual and physical violence.

In the Kujang block of Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district, floods are nearly an annual affair, making the local school vulnerable.

In Saharadiya village, located in Kujang block of Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur district, the local school situated on the banks of Mahanadi river is prone to flooding almost every year. “Schools remain shut, and we play,” Pinky Pradhan, a grade VII student, says. “Our parents scold us and ask us to study. But it is difficult without teachers around. So, we rely on tuition classes.”

Her mother Sumanta interjects: “Almost every year there are floods, and the school building gets half-submerged. Classes stop for 1-15 days, depending on the severity of the situation. Teachers try online classes during longer closures, but the learning is not the same. These young kids get distracted easily. During flood-like situations, we parents have bigger responsibilities than to constantly keep track of whether our children are studying or not.”

“Whenever early summer vacation is announced, teachers still report but students stay home,” says Laxmicharan Behera, teacher at Podampeta school. “We assign work per guidelines and share YouTube videos from OSEPA (Odisha School Education Programme Authority). Tracking progress via WhatsApp groups helps. Though classroom attention is irreplaceable, we try to prevent learning gaps.”

But access is limited. A 2021 report published by the Department of School Education and Literacy suggests, only 46% students have internet connectivity at home.

In the early months of the pandemic, more than 80% of parents with children studying in government schools reported that education was “not delivered” during the lockdown, according to a five-state survey, as IndiaSpend reported in September 2020. This failure was mostly because families did not have digital devices and access to digital mediums of education.

In such cases, parents turn to tuition as a lifeline. “We push our kids to attend school daily, an opportunity we had missed. School closures for a long duration hurt less with tuition. We pay the tutors directly, so they are accountable. The government teachers get paid regardless of holidays,” says daily-wage labourer J. Shyam, a resident of New Podampeta and a father of three.

Local solutions

While there is a provision of ‘remedial teaching’ in the educational policy, it lacks clear guidelines. The way around would be to engage communities in the education process.

“The main issue during long school closures is the disconnect between students and education. If that is bridged, learning loss can be minimised,” says Pradeep Kumar Mohanty, state programme manager for Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti (BGVS), working in Odisha’s education sector since 1992. “One way would be to involve the community or promote active engagement of parents through School Management Committees.”

His team piloted learning centers in the climate-vulnerable Brahmagiri region, run by community volunteers. “We also need to help children develop an emotional bond with their schools through simple steps: playing on campus during vacations, or watering and caring for saplings planted there,” Mohanty says.

Padmini, who trains youth in digital skills while working closely with her community, stresses the need for urgent local action.

“Each community within a geography will have different challenges,” she said. “Ours was a predominantly fishing community with almost everyone involved in it. But now, due to fishing bans for Olive Ridley turtle conservation and extreme weather events, fishing is no longer a viable option year-round. So, many migrate for skill-based work elsewhere. This makes learning loss a missed opportunity for the youth who are looking to secure their livelihoods. So, we need to come up with solutions tailored for the local communities to tackle the climate chaos.”

The story has been produced with support from the Earth Journalism Network.

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