Poverty and climate change: Natural disasters, agricultural impacts and health shocks

The international community aims to eradicate extreme poverty, and to do so in a sustainable manner. This chapter suggests that climate change poses a major obstacle to this challenge. Climate-related shocks and stresses – from natural disasters, to agricultural impacts and health shocks – already prevent households from escaping poverty. Poor people are disproportionally vulnerable to these shocks, because they are more exposed and lose more when affected. Climate change will worsen the situation, making it more difficult to eradicate poverty in a sustainable manner. Many policy options are available to help reduce poor people’s risk and vulnerability, including building climate-smart infrastructure, providing universal health coverage, implementing social safety nets that can be scaled-up and rapidly targeted towards people affected by a shock, and facilitating migration. With regards to natural hazards, agricultural impacts and health shocks, climate change makes existing priorities more urgent. If addressed correctly, this urgency can turn into an opportunity to reduce both current poverty and future climate vulnerability, before most of the impacts of climate change materialise.