The United Nations warned last week that nearly 80 percent of the world’s poorest, or about 900 million people, are directly exposed to climate hazards exacerbated by global warming, bearing a “double and deeply unequal burden.”
“No one is immune to the increasingly frequent and stronger climate change effects like droughts, floods, heat waves, and air pollution, but it’s the poorest among us who are facing the harshest impact,” Haoliang Xu, acting administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said in a statement.
COP30, the UN climate summit in Brazil in November, “is the moment for world leaders to look at climate action as action against poverty,” he added.
According to an annual study published by the UNDP together 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 “acute multidimensional” poverty, based on factors like infant mortality and access to housing, sanitation, electricity, and education. Half of those people are minors.
The report highlights the connection between poverty and exposure to four environmental risks: extreme heat, drought, floods, and air pollution. “Impoverished households are especially susceptible to climate shocks as many depend on highly vulnerable sectors such as agriculture and informal labor,” the report said.
“When hazards overlap or strike repeatedly, they compound existing deprivations.”
The increase in extreme weather events also threatens development progress.
With the Earth’s surface rapidly getting warmer, the situation is likely to worsen further and experts warn that today’s poorest countries will be hardest hit by rising temperatures.
As usual, the poorest of the poor are expected to suffer the brunt of the impact, and to make matters worse, these members of society are the ones that depend on their respective governments to somehow soften the blow. This can be done by lobbying on the global stage, for more climate action, especially from the bigger and richer nations that contribute more to the problem, and on the home front, by deepening the commitment to policies, plans, and programs that can hopefully mitigate the impacts of climate change and global warming.*
