How poverty and climate change interact?

Climate change is not only expected to keep people currently living in poverty trapped there but also threatens to cancel out progress that has been made to reduce poverty. The multiplier effect of climate change interacting with other drivers of poverty is expected to lead to a range of challenges for poor, and near-poor households.

The complex links between climate change and poverty eradication now feature in the mainstream discourse and evidence of their two-way relationship has been building. This is helping to inform strategies to address climate change and extreme poverty cohesively. Significant gaps remain, though, and interventions to address climate and environmental goals have received less attention than other sustainable development goals, such as those for health and education.

We explore how climate change is expected to affect efforts to reduce extreme poverty by 2030 in this paper.