Nearly 900M People Exposed to Climate Shocks, UN Warns

AFP/APP

United Nations: Nearly 80 percent of the world’s poorest population — about 900 million people — are directly exposed to climate hazards intensified by global warming, bearing what the United Nations has described as a “double and deeply unequal burden.”

“No one is immune to the increasingly frequent and severe effects of climate change such as droughts, floods, heatwaves, and air pollution. 

But it’s the poorest among us who are facing the harshest impacts,” said Haoliang Xu, acting administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in a statement to AFP.

Xu emphasized that COP30, the upcoming UN climate summit in Brazil this November, presents an opportunity for world leaders to treat climate action as a form of poverty alleviation.

According to the annual UNDP-Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) study, about 1.1 billion people, or 18 percent of the 6.3 billion across 109 countries, live in “acute multidimensional” poverty. 

This measure factors in deprivations such as child mortality, inadequate housing, lack of sanitation, limited access to electricity, and poor education — with half of those affected being children.

The report cited the example of Ricardo, a member of Bolivia’s Guarani Indigenous community living outside Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Ricardo, a day laborer, shares a small house with 18 family members, including his three children and parents. 

The home has a single bathroom, a wood- and coal-fired kitchen, and none of the children attend school. “Their lives reflect the multidimensional realities of poverty,” the report noted.

Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia were identified as the two regions most severely affected by such poverty — and also the most vulnerable to climate impacts.

The study underscores the link between poverty and environmental risks, including extreme heat, drought, floods, and air pollution. Poor households, the report said, are particularly vulnerable as many depend on climate-sensitive sectors like agriculture and informal labor.

When multiple hazards occur simultaneously or repeatedly, they compound existing deprivations.

Overall, 887 million people (79%) living in poverty are directly exposed to at least one of these threats:

• 608 million to extreme heat
• 577 million to air pollution
• 465 million to floods
• 207 million to drought

About 651 million people face at least two of these risks, 309 million endure three or four, and 11 million have experienced all four in a single year.

“Concurrent poverty and climate hazards are clearly a global issue,” the report concluded, warning that the growing frequency of extreme weather events threatens to reverse decades of development gains.