Nearly 900 million poor people vulnerable to climate shocks, warns UN

Nearly 80 percent of the world’s poorest people, some 900 million people, are directly exposed to climate threats exacerbated by global warming, bearing a “double and profoundly unequal burden,” the United Nations warned on Friday.

“No one is immune to the increasingly frequent and severe impacts of climate change, such as droughts, floods, heatwaves and air pollution, but it is the poorest among us who face the most severe impacts,” Haoliang Xu, acting administrator of the United Nations Development Program, told AFP in a statement.

COP30, November’s UN climate summit in Brazil, “is the moment for world leaders to look at climate action as a fight against poverty,” he added.

According to an annual study published by UNDP with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, 1.1 billion people, or about 18 percent of the 6.3 billion in 109 countries analyzed, live in “severe, multidimensional” poverty caused by factors such as infant mortality and access to housing, sanitation, electricity and education.

Half of these people are minors.

One example of such extreme deprivation cited in the report is the case of Ricardo, a member of the indigenous Guarani community living outside Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia’s largest city.

Ricardo, who earns a modest salary as a day laborer, shares his small single-family home with 18 other people, including three children, his parents and extended family.

There is only one bathroom in the house, a wood- and coal-fired kitchen, and none of the children go to school.

“Their lives reflect the multidimensional reality of poverty,” the report said.

Two regions particularly affected by such poverty are sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, which are also highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

The report highlighted the link between poverty and exposure to four environmental hazards: extreme heat, drought, floods and air pollution.

“Implemented households are particularly vulnerable to climate shocks because many of them depend on highly sensitive sectors such as agriculture and informal work,” the report said.

“When threats overlap or strike multiple times, they exacerbate existing shortages.”

As a result, 887 million people, or almost 79 percent of this poor population, are directly exposed to at least one of these threats: 608 million people suffer from extreme heat, 577 million suffer from pollution, 465 million from floods, and 207 million from drought.

About 651 million people face at least two types of risk, 309 million face three or four types of risk, and 11 million poor people have already experienced all four in one year.

“Contemporary poverty and climate threats are undoubtedly a global problem,” the report stated.

And the increase in extreme weather events threatens development progress.

Although South Asia had made progress in the fight against poverty, 99.1 percent of its poor population was exposed to at least one climate hazard.

The region “must once again chart a new path forward that balances decisive poverty reduction with innovative climate action,” the report says.

As the Earth’s surface warms rapidly, the situation is likely to worsen, and experts warn that today’s poorest countries will be hardest hit by rising temperatures.

“Responding to overlapping threats requires setting priorities for both people and the planet, and above all, moving from reconnaissance to rapid action,” the report says.