The world has lifted millions out of poverty but the climate crisis could undo decades of progress

More people than ever are at risk of penury, warns the UN. Worse, they are less likely to escape it. At a time we are celebrating the fact that the world has lifted large numbers out of poverty, this study’s finding that climate- related disasters pushed around 32 million people from their homes and communities in 2022 alone makes for sombre reading.

Globally, it is a truism that the poor face the brunt of climate hazards. Impoverished households are especially exposed to climate shocks, as many depend on high-risk sectors like agriculture and on informal labour for their livelihood. Any effort to tackle poverty must therefore take into account how climate risks evolve over time.

The report makes an apt distinction between monetary and multidimensional poverty; the latter tracks much more than financial penury by covering aspects of deprivation like health, education and standard of living. The study integrates data on this wide-angle metric of poverty with that on climate hazards across sub-national regions in 108 countries, including India, with four threats in focus: high heat, drought, floods and air pollution. It then estimates the number of broadly classified have-nots who are also exposed to climate risks.

Distressingly, almost half of all such have-nots—some 518 million across the globe—live in just six middle-income countries: Bangladesh, China, India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Tanzania.

The good news is that India has tackled poverty quite well so far. In 2005-06, 55.1% of all Indians were poor; by 2019-21, about 414 million people had been lifted out of poverty, reducing the poor to just 16.4% of the population.

Though only 4.2% of our people are in ‘severe’ multidimensional poverty, a much higher proportion, 18.7%, remains vulnerable. In contrast, another middle-income country, Indonesia, which comprises about 17,000 islands and would thus seem at high climate risk, has only 0.4% in the ‘severe’ bracket and just 4.7% ‘vulnerable.’

With less than a fortnight to go before the next Conference of the Parties (CoP-30)—or countries that signed the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change—at Belém in Brazil, the report’s grim message on poverty’s climate link could not be more timely.

Sadly, with the world’s most powerful nation, the US, having withdrawn from the Paris pact of 2015, the world is unlikely to make much headway on either stalling climate change or cushioning people from the effects of a planet at risk of exceeding the cap we had agreed upon. By the Paris treaty, all parties are legally bound to limit global warming to well below 2° Celsius above the pre-industrial level, with a cap of 1.5° Celsius as the collective aim.

America under President Donald Trump has been too dismissive of the crisis to join interim talks held this June in Bonn, Germany. The US disposition is a let-down for the planet at large, but especially for the world’s poor. Yet, it grants the rest of us no excuse to give up the battle against climate change and poverty. Both are linked and nobody should have to bear a double burden.