Though the oppressive heat is energy-sapping – and despite not having eaten since the previous morning – Dukano, a 34-year-old mother of five, has no option but to walk for several hours to the nearest borehole, a journey that will likely end in disappointment as water levels are critically low. Ever since she was married off by her family at the age of 15, this dispiriting ritual has been a twice-weekly chore for Dukano.

Her toil is like that experienced by thousands of women who live in stick-framed nomadic shelters pitched between black volcanic boulders on the arid plains of northern Kenya, where an existence that was already precarious has become a daily battle for survival. Aid groups say climate change is not only making droughts more devastating and frequent but also deepening inequality in insidious ways. The toll of more severe dry spells on human lives is often unforeseen. One of the most disturbing developments has been a surge in the rate of child marriage, noticeably in communities in which there has been no rain for nine months.

The livestock that people depend on in these areas are dying from starvation and dehydration as the land becomes more sterile. As a result, desperate families feel forced to offer up their daughters for marriage in exchange for a camel and a few goats – an arrangement that may provide the girl’s family with sustenance for a few more months. During a journey on bumpy, barely passable tracks through the desert north of the regional capital, Marsabit, near Kenya’s border with Ethiopia, stories like Dukano’s are familiar.

Many girls are forced into marriage while they are still children and soon have to shoulder the burden of feeding their own children. Nearly two hours after leaving the village, Dukano finally arrives at the well on which the local population is so dependent. The donkey is loaded up with six yellow jerry cans strapped across its back with ropes. Here, other women squat in the shade of a single skeletal acacia tree, waiting for their turn. (Al Jazeera/Oxfam)