Nearly 8 in 10 people living in multidimensional poverty are stuck in places exposed to climate hazards like extreme heat, flooding, drought, or dangerous air pollution. That’s 887 million out of 1.1 billion poor people worldwide, according to announcement from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, which released the report ahead of next month’s COP30 climate summit in Brazil. The report shows climate change isn’t just an environmental problem—it’s making poverty worse and harder to escape.
The 2025 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index report is the first to map climate hazard data against poverty data. It measures poverty across health, education, and living standards, revealing that 651 million poor people face two or more climate hazards at once, while 309 million are dealing with three or four hazards simultaneously. High heat affects 608 million poor people, air pollution hits 577 million, flooding threatens 465 million, and drought affects 207 million.
South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa take the worst hit. In South Asia, 99 percent of poor people—380 million—are exposed to at least one climate shock, and 92 percent face two or more. That’s higher than anywhere else in the world. Sub-Saharan Africa has 344 million poor people living in climate hazard zones. Lower-middle-income countries carry the heaviest load overall, with 548 million poor people exposed to at least one hazard.
“Our new research shows that to address global poverty and create a more stable world for everyone, we must confront the climate risks endangering nearly 900 million poor people,” said Haoliang Xu, UNDP Acting Administrator. “When world leaders meet in Brazil for the Climate Conference, COP30, next month, their national climate pledges must revitalize the stagnating development progress.”
The problem will get worse. Countries with the highest poverty rates now are projected to see the biggest temperature increases by the end of the century. The report calls for climate-resilient poverty strategies, better local adaptation, and more international funding to tackle these overlapping crises before they spiral further.
