Overlapping crises: How global warming is deepening global poverty

Climate change is not just a challenge for humanity in general, it has a key role to play in driving global poverty and inequality. This was a finding of the 2025 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index report titled “Overlapping Hardships and Climate Hazards”. The report, which overlaid climate-hazard data with multidimensional-poverty data — spanning health, education, and living standards — for the first time, established that eight out of 10 people living in multidimensional poverty, or about 887 million people, are directly exposed to climate hazards such as extreme heat, floods, drought, or air pollution. Presented ahead of the United Nations Conference of Parties (COP30), to be held in Brazil between November 10 and 21, the report unequivocally says that the “climate crisis is reshaping global poverty”.  The report, thus, adds considerable heft to developing countries’ demand that the developed world, with its deep historical responsibility for the toxic climate-altering emission in the atmosphere, significantly raise its financial contributions towards the adaptation and mitigation efforts of the world’s most vulnerable developing economies. Since climate change is a global phenomenon, it is equally critical that countries work on mutually reinforcing climate-action plans beyond the individual emission-reduction targets adopted at the Paris agreement in 2015.

 

The report, jointly produced by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the University of Oxford’s Oxford Poverty and Human Initiative, makes the point that asymmetrical exposure to climate change tends to reinforce poverty. By exacerbating the daily challenges poor people face under these circumstances, extreme climate events only deepen their disadvantages. It showed that among those assessed to be living in acute multidimensional poverty, 651 million endure two or more climate hazards and 309 million face three or four hazards simultaneously — a “triple or quadruple burden”, according to the report — mainly on account of their limited assets or access to social protection services. High heat (impacting 608 million poor people) and air pollution (577 million) are the most prevalent hazards globally. Flood-prone regions and those affected by drought impact 465 million and 207 million, respectively.

 

This “convergence” of the climate crisis and poverty is most prevalent in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, the outlook for India and its neighbourhood is alarming. The report says 99.1 per cent of the poor in the region are exposed to one or more climate shocks and 91.6 per cent of them face two or more such events, which is much higher than in any other region in the world. This is a wakeup call. Two major countries in the region — India and Bangladesh — have made considerable strides towards reducing multidimensional poverty. These findings suggest that both countries, and others in the region, need to accelerate climate-action strategies not only within their national boundaries but also in a coordinated manner to insulate their most vulnerable people. Most alarmingly, perhaps, the report predicts that, without immediate remedial action, these burdens are likely to intensify. An analysis of the temperature-projection data indicates that countries with higher levels of multidimensional poverty will experience the greatest increase in temperature by the end of this century. Once the elaborate political choreography of COP30 is set aside, the report could well contribute towards framing a meaningful agenda for the 10-day conference.