Poverty & climate hazards
How overlapping crises create more hardship for hundreds of millions
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) measures acute multifaceted poverty in more than 100 developing countries.
First launched in 2010 by UNDP and now produced with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, it looks beyond just income to reveal the many facets and consequences of poverty.
This year’s MPI report examines four climate hazards—high heat, droughts, floods and air pollution—and estimates the number of multidimensionally poor people exposed to at least one of them. It shows that the poorest in the world, already deprived of healthcare, education and basic standards of living, are also on the frontlines of climate change.
This work resonates with climate themes that UNDP’s Human Development Report Office has critically engaged with in the past, including the 2007/2008 Human Development Report on Fighting Climate Change, and the 2020 Report on Human Development and the Anthropocene.
Who and where are the poorest?
The 2025 MPI Report includes data from 109 countries with a total population of 6.3 billion people. Among these, 1.1 billion live in acute multidimensional poverty. Some 43.6 percent of the multidimensionally poor live in severe poverty, meaning they are deprived of 50 percent or more of the necessities of a dignified life.
Children continue to bear the heaviest burden. Around 27.8 percent of children live in multidimensional poverty, a rate that is more than double that of adults, where the figure stands at 13.5 percent. In absolute terms, children account for more than half of the 1.1 billion people who are multidimensionally poor.
Childhood poverty remains one of the most pressing dimensions of global deprivation, with consequences that can stretch through decades, limiting the opportunities of future generations. Poverty is concentrated in countries facing the steepest development challenges. More than 1 billion poor people, who represent 90.5 percent of the world’s multidimensionally poor, live in countries with low or medium human development. An overwhelming majority of the poor—955 million people—live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. This concentration underscores the structural disadvantages faced by those already struggling with limited resources and development opportunities.
The March 2025 earthquake in Myanmar destroyed homes, schools and vital facilities, leaving families with fewer safe places. For children, already twice as likely as adults to live in poverty, this loss deepens hardship and threatens their future.
But poverty is not confined to low-income countries. Nearly two thirds of the multidimensionally poor live in middle-income countries. Even upper-middle-income countries still account for significant numbers of poor, 103 million, showing that poverty persists in many economic landscapes.
A vast majority of the global poor live with climate hazards every day.
Nearly 8 in 10 multidimensionally poor people (887 million people across 108 countries) are exposed to at least one major climate hazard.
Nearly 309 million poor people are exposed to three or four climate hazards at the same time. Of these, about 11 million live in regions exposed to all four hazards, representing about 1 percent of the world’s poor.
These groups often have limited assets, reduced coping capacity and minimal access to social protection, so the effects of concurrent environmental shocks are significantly worse.
Colliding burdens
Poverty and climate burdens collide most sharply in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
South Asia alone has 351 million poor people living with multiple hazards, while 193 million in sub-Saharan Africa face the same reality.
In countries like Central African Republic, Chad and Niger, over 80 percent of the poor live in areas exposed to at least one climate hazard. In the Arab States, over 8 in 10 poor people, 42 million, endure high heat. In Latin America and the Caribbean, more than a third of poor people live in regions affected by both heat and floods, with over a quarter also exposed to drought. In Europe and Central Asia, where poverty levels are lower overall, about 4 in 10 poor people face drought and heat.
A family in Dadu, Sindh rebuilds their flood-damaged home. Poverty and climate burdens collide in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, with hundreds of millions of people exposed to multiple hazards.
Climate hazards deepen poverty in places like Somaliland, where drought undermines livelihoods and forces women and girls to walk farther for water.
In Skopje, North Macedonia, one of Europe’s most polluted cities, thick smog is a daily reality, and poor households bear the heaviest burden of toxic air.
Lower-middle-income countries are heavily burdened by exposure to climate hazards. Around 548 million poor people in these countries live in areas exposed to at least one. The majority face multiple challenges, with 446 million exposed to heat, 441 million to air pollution and 325 million to floods. Upper-middle-income countries have fewer poor people, but an overwhelming 91 percent of them, around 93 million people, are exposed to at least one climate hazard, particularly air pollution and flooding.
More heat ahead
The message of the 2025 MPI Report is clear. The world’s poorest communities face an unequal burden from the climate hazards they did little to create, and there is an urgent global need for action to address this imbalance.
Projection data from UNDP’s Human Climate Horizon platform suggest that today’s poorest countries are likely to face the steepest increases in extreme heat in the coming decades.
Breaking the cycle will require approaches that are both people-centred and planet-sensitive, such as early warning systems, expanded social protection and investing in programmes that protect nature while creating jobs.
But these efforts cannot rest solely on poor countries. The United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP30, is just one international forum to examine climate justice financing and expanded multilateral funding. A sustainable future depends on aligning poverty reduction with climate action. The world’s most vulnerable cannot be left behind as the planet warms.
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