Climate Change

Climate change and exposure to ‘natural’ disasters threaten to derail international efforts to eradicate poverty by 2030. As temperatures warm, many of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens will face the growing risks linked to more intense or lengthy droughts, extreme rainfall and flooding and severe heat waves – risks that threaten lives and livelihoods, as well as the hard-won gains made on poverty in recent decades. We already know that disasters have a distinct geography, that poverty is concentrated in particular parts of the world and that climate change has an impact on extremes of heat, rainfall and droughts in many regions. But how will these patterns overlap in 2030, and how serious a threat do disasters and climate change pose to our prospects of eliminating extreme poverty in the next two decades?