Climate change and poverty

Climate change and poverty are deeply intertwined because climate change disproportionally affects poor people in low-income communities and developing countries around the world. The impoverished have a higher chance of experiencing the ill-effects of climate change due to the increased exposure and vulnerability.^[1] Vulnerability represents the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change including climate variability and extremes.^[2]

Climate change highly exacerbates existing inequalities through its effects on health, the economy, and human rights. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth National Climate Assessment Report found that low-income individuals and communities are more exposed to environmental hazards and pollution and have a harder time recovering from the impacts of climate change.^[3] For example, it takes longer for low-income communities to be rebuilt after natural disasters.^[4] According to the United Nations Development Programme, developing countries suffer 99% of the casualties attributable to climate change.^[5]

Different countries' impact on climate change also varies based on their stage of development; the 50 least developed countries of the world account for a 1% contribution to the worldwide emissions of greenhouse gasses, which are a byproduct of global warming.^[5] Additionally, 92% of accumulated greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to countries from the Global North, which comprise 19% of the global population, while 8% of emissions are attributed to countries from the Global South, who bear the heaviest consequences of increasing global temperature.^[6][7]

Climate and distributive justice questions are central to climate change policy options. Many policy tools can be employed to solve environmental problems such as cost-benefit analysis; however, such tools usually do not deal with such issues because they often ignore questions of just distribution and the environmental effects on human rights.