Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-10 (section)

=== 10.3.3 Demographics and Socioeconomic Characteristics ===

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In the six sub-regions of Asia, nature and biophysical impacts of climate change are observed in three climate-change hotspots where strong climate signals and high concentrations of vulnerable people are present, namely in semiarid, glacial-fed river basins and mega deltas ( [[#De%20Souza--2015|De Souza et al., 2015]] ; [[#Kilroy--2015|Kilroy, 2015]] ; [[#Szabo--2016b|Szabo et al., 2016b]] ). The impacts of global climate events also have profound social implications, threatening human health and well-being, destabilising assets, weakening coping capacities and response infrastructures and substantially increasing the number of socially, economically and psychologically vulnerable individuals and communities ( [[#Ford--2015|Ford et al., 2015]] ).

Vulnerability to climate change varies by geography and by the economic circumstances of the exposed population ( [[#Sovacool--2017|Sovacool et al., 2017]] ). The concentration of population growth in less developed regions means that an increasing number of people live in countries with the least ability to adapt to climate change ( [[#Auffhammer--2018|Auffhammer and Kahn, 2018]] ). Bangladesh with 163 million people, an example, is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate risks and natural hazards, and faces severe floods, cyclones, droughts, heatwaves and storm surges on a regular basis ( [[#Dastagir--2015|Dastagir, 2015]] ; [[#Hossain--2018|Hossain et al., 2018]] ; [[#Roy--2019|Roy and Haider, 2019]] ).

Differential human vulnerability to environmental hazards results from a range of social, economic, historical and political factors, all of which operate at multiple scales ( [[#De%20Souza--2015|De Souza et al., 2015]] ; Thomas, 2019). Climate change is expected to have serious impacts on people living within these hotspot areas, as observed from loss of food crop yields to disasters such as floods, fluctuations in seasonal water availability or other systemic effects ( [[#De%20Souza--2015|De Souza et al., 2015]] ). For instance, in South Asia, extreme climatic conditions are threatening food security; thus, agro-based economies, such as those of India and Pakistan, are the most vulnerable to climate change in this regard ( [[#Mendelsohn--2014|Mendelsohn, 2014]] ; Ahmad, 2015; [[#Kirby--2016|Kirby et al., 2016]] ; [[#Ali--2017|Ali et al., 2017]] ).

A broad-based understanding of gender vulnerability in the context of poverty and social discrimination, as well as diverse social and cultural practices in different political, geographic and historical settings, apart from climate variability along with environmental and natural risks, is central to understanding people’s capacities to cope with, and adapt to change ( [[#Morchain--2015|Morchain et al., 2015]] ; [[#Yadav--2018|Yadav and Lal, 2018]] ; [[#Rao--2019|Rao et al., 2019]] ). Studies highlight the fact that disasters do not affect people equally; mostly findings show that insufficient disaster education, inadequate protection measures and powerful cultural issues, both pre- and post-disaster, increase women’s vulnerability during and after disasters ( [[#Isik--2015|Isik et al., 2015]] ; [[#Reyes--2016|Reyes and Lu, 2016]] ; [[#Hamidazada--2019|Hamidazada et al., 2019]] ). In particular, cultural issues play a role after disasters by affecting women’s security, access to disaster aid and health care ( [[#Raju--2019|Raju, 2019]] ). There must be more nuanced understanding and examination of gender, as well as poor, disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, in vulnerability and risk assessments ( [[#Reyes--2016|Reyes and Lu, 2016]] ; Reyer, 2017; [[#Xenarios--2019|Xenarios et al., 2019]] ).

Based on the ‘World Economic Situation and Prospects as of mid-2019 Report’, the region has an estimated 400 million people living in extreme poverty below the threshold of 1.90 USD d –1 . At the higher international poverty line of 3.20 USD d –1 , the number of poor rises to 1.2 billion people, accounting for more than a quarter of the region’s total population (Holland, 2019). Beyond monetary measures, indicators of multi-dimensional aspects of poverty, most notably in Southern Asia, indicate that a large share of the population still lacks access to basic infrastructure and services ( [[#Bank--2017b|Bank, 2017b]] ).

For instance, South Asia illustrates that on average it could lose nearly 2% of its GDP by 2050, rising to a loss of nearly 9% by 2100 under a business-as-usual scenario ( [[#Ahmed--2014|Ahmed and Suphachalasai, 2014]] ). The relationship between economic outcomes and cross-sectional climate variation is confounded by regional heterogeneity, including historical effects of settlement and colonisation ( [[#Dell--2014|Dell et al., 2014]] ; [[#Newell--2018|Newell et al., 2018]] ). Climate change vulnerability may also depend on sufficient employment opportunities in the risk-prone areas, land-holding size, gender, education level, and family and community size, as observed in Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam ( [[#Baul--2015|Baul and McDonald, 2015]] ; Lebel L., 2015; [[#Phuong--2018a|Phuong et al., 2018a]] ).

As poor households are constrained in their ability to receive nutrition, schooling and health care for their children, this is greatly dampening progress in human capital development and productivity growth, both of which are critical imperatives for sustainable development ( [[#Carleton--2016|Carleton and Hsiang, 2016]] ; [[#Schlenker--2018|Schlenker and Auffhammer, 2018]] ). Studies also have shown negative impacts of climate change on several essential components of people’s livelihoods and well-being, such as water supply, food production, human health, availability of land and ecosystems ( [[#Alauddin--2013|Alauddin and Rahman, 2013]] ; [[#Arnell--2016|Arnell et al., 2016]] ; [[#Roy--2019|Roy and Haider, 2019]] ).

Major population trends of urbanisation and urban area expansion are forecast to take place in Asia. It has been mentioned that demographic change will make humanity more vulnerable to climate change, particularly in places with high poverty rates and potentially prone to systemic disruptions in the food system ( [[#Puma--2015|Puma et al., 2015]] ; [[#d’Amour--2016|d’Amour et al., 2016]] ; [[#d’Amour--2017|d’Amour et al., 2017]] ).

The urban population of the world has grown rapidly from 751 million in 1950 to 4.2 billion in 2018. Asia, despite its relatively lower level of urbanisation, is home to 54% of the world’s urban population (United [[#Nations--2019|Nations, 2019]] ). Some cities have experienced population decline in recent years. Most of these cities are located in the low-fertility countries of Asia, where overall population sizes are stagnant or declining, as observed in a few cities in Japan and the Republic of Korea (e.g., Nagasaki and Busan), which experienced a population decline between 2000 and 2018 (United [[#Nations--2019|Nations, 2019]] ). By 2030, the world is projected to have 43 megacities with more than 10 million inhabitants, most of them in developing regions. However, some of the fastest-growing urban agglomerations are cities with fewer than 1 million inhabitants, many of them located in Asia and Africa (United [[#Nations--2019|Nations, 2019]] ). Challenges with water supply, in many cases, have existed for decades (Dasgupta, 2015). Climate change increases these challenges ( [[#Hoque--2016|Hoque et al., 2016]] ). As more people inhabit urban areas, the number of people vulnerable to heat stress is thus ''likely'' to rise, a problem that will be compounded by rising temperatures due to climate change ( [[#Acharya--2018|Acharya et al., 2018]] ). Compared with rural areas, hot temperature risk is even higher in urban regions (Luo, 2018a; Ye, 2018; Setiawati Martiwi Diah, 2021).

The impact of heat in rural areas has been a blind spot so far, particularly for farmers and outdoor labourers who are increasingly exposed to high outdoor temperatures due to increased intensity in agriculture combined with changes in working hours (Tasgaonkar, 2018).

Farmers as a group have shown an increasing number of females over the years due to migration of male members into urban areas for employment, which is putting women at more severe risk in the context of climate variability ( [[#Singh--2019|Singh, 2019]] ). Women are required to acquire new capacities to manage new challenges, including risks from climate change, through capacity-building interventions to strengthen autonomous-adaptation measures ( [[#Banerjee--2019|Banerjee et al., 2019]] ; [[#James--2019|James, 2019]] ; Mishra, 2019). However, the overlapping crises of climate change and the global public health crisis of COVID-19 represent a major challenge to gender equality and sustainable development (Katherine Brickell, 2020; [[#Sultana--2021|Sultana, 2021]] ).

For vulnerable populations, such as Indigenous Peoples, older and low-income groups, women, children, people with disabilities and minorities, the health effects of climate-change-related extreme weather events can be especially devastating ( [[#McGill--2016|McGill, 2016]] ). Such populations may be more susceptible to disease, have pre-existing health conditions or live in areas that do not promote good health or well-being; for instance, loss of income and food supply shortages could lead children in rural households to nutritional deprivations that can have both immediate and lifelong impacts ( [[#Gleick--2014|Gleick, 2014]] ; [[#UNICEF--2015|UNICEF, 2015]] ). Children, already susceptible to age-related insecurities, face additional destabilising insecurities from questions about how they will cope with future climate change ( [[#Hansen--2013|Hansen et al., 2013]] ).

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