Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-8 (section)

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

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=== FAQ 8.1 | Why are people who are poor and disadvantaged especially vulnerable to climate change and why do climate change impacts worsen inequality? ===

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''Poor people and their livelihoods are especially vulnerable to climate change because they usually have fewer assets and less access to funding, technologies and political influence. Combined, these constraints mean they have fewer resources to adapt to climate change impacts. Climate change impacts tend to worsen inequalities because they disproportionately affect disadvantaged groups. This in turn further increases their vulnerability to climate change impacts and reduces their ability to cope and recover.''

Climate change and related hazards (e.g., droughts, floods, heat stress, etc.) affect many aspects of people’s lives—such as their health, access to food and housing, or their source of income such as crops or fish stocks—and many will have to adapt their way of life in order to deal with these impacts. People who are poor and have few resources with which to adapt are thus much more seriously negatively affected by climate-related hazards. ‘Vulnerability’ is when a person or community is not able to cope and adapt to climate-related hazards. For example, if someone who is very rich has their house washed away in a flood, this is terrible, but they often have more resources to rebuild, have insurances that support recovery and maybe even build a house that is not in a flood-prone area. Whereas for someone who is very poor and who does not live in a state that provides support, the loss of their house in a flood could mean homelessness. This example shows that the same climate hazard (flood) can have a very different impact on people depending on their vulnerability (their capacity to cope and adapt to hazards).

It is not just poverty that can make people more vulnerable to climate change and climate-related hazards. Disadvantage due to discrimination, gender and income inequalities and lack of access to resources (e.g., those with disabilities or of minority groups) can mean these groups have fewer resources with which to prepare and react to climate change and to cope with and recover from its adverse effects. They are therefore more vulnerable. This vulnerability can then increase due to climate change impacts in a vicious cycle unless adaptation measures are supported and made possible.

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=== FAQ 8.2 | Which world regions are highly vulnerable and how many people live there? ===

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''A mix of multiple development challenges, such as poverty, hunger, conflict and environmental degradation, make countries and whole regions vulnerable to climate change. Many of the people in the most vulnerable situations and in the most vulnerable regions are also highly exposed to climate hazards, such as droughts, floods or sea level rise at present and will become increasingly so in the future. Studies estimate that around 3.3 to 3.6 billion people are living in regions classified as highly vulnerable to climate change impacts, which is significantly higher than the number of people who reside in regions classified as least vulnerable. The most vulnerable regions include East, Central and West Africa, South Asia, Micronesia and Melanesia, and Central America.''

When a country or region is considered ‘vulnerable’ to climate change this means that climate hazards (e.g., drought, flood, heatwaves) have a very negative impact because there is a high number of people in these areas that lack the ability or opportunity to cope and adapt to such events, due to, for example, high average poverty, inequality and lack of institutional support. This vulnerability could be due to many different development challenges that all come together and influence each other, such as poverty, lack of access to basic infrastructure services, high numbers of uprooted people, state fragility, low or below average life expectancy and biodiversity degradation. These structural social issues often affect regions for many decades and make it difficult for the state and for individuals to respond to climate change and climate-related hazards.

For example, if a region is already characterised by poverty and struggling to feed its population and provide adequate access to basic infrastructure services, such as water and sanitation, this makes them vulnerable. If this region is then faced with an increased number of extremely dry years, this exposes them to drought and will make things even harder causing more hunger, poverty and worsened health—these are climate impacts.

Most vulnerable regions are in Africa, as well as in South Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean. In these regions, there are often multiple neighbouring countries that all are highly vulnerable, for example in Central and West Africa. These regional clusters require special attention.

There are also highly vulnerable groups and individuals within less vulnerable regions. For example, marginalised, disadvantaged and poor minorities within highly affluent cities. Programmes that aim to support adaptation to climate change need to focus on reducing the vulnerability of individuals, groups, countries and regions.

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=== FAQ 8.3 | How does and will climate change interact with other global trends (e.g., urbanisation, economic globalisation) and shocks (e.g., COVID-19) to influence livelihoods of the poor? ===

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''A range of local, regional and global economic and political processes already underway have put the livelihoods of the poor at risk. These processes include urbanisation, industrialisation, technological transformation, monetisation of rural economies, increasing reliance on wages, and inequality at national and international levels. Climate change intersects with these processes.''

The world’s poorest already struggle to provide for themselves and their families in their pursuit of livelihoods. Despite hard work there are many factors beyond an individual’s control that can make earning a living very difficult. Climate change is one problem among many that puts stress on livelihoods. Poor and marginal groups disproportionately bear impacts of climate change, in ways that accelerate transitions from traditional livelihoods, such as rural farming, to wage jobs in urban areas. Where adaptation measures are insufficient and where the poor are excluded from decision making, these livelihood transitions can be severely destabilising.

For example, climate change may alter the frequency or intensity of hazards that threaten the viability of a community’s traditional farming or fishing livelihoods. Local farmers or fishers are then forced to adapt how they farm or fish or abandon livelihood practices entirely. The latter may mean migrating to a city to find work. As many communities face the same challenge, this intersects with a global trend that is affecting billions of lives and livelihoods—urbanisation—as seen in the rapid growth of informal settlements at the peripheries of cities around the world, particularly rapidly growing mega-cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. These developments will be accelerated by negative impacts of climate change and increase risks that larger segments of the population enter conditions of persistent poverty.

At the same time, people whose livelihoods have been upended by climate change are subject to new threats, such as the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has shone a light on the plight of the most vulnerable people. For example, the elderly, Indigenous Peoples and Communities of Colour were disproportionately severely impacted by COVID-19; also the indirect economic consequences particularly hit the poor. Hence, COVID-19 demonstrates that the livelihoods of the poorest and most marginalised are vulnerable to other global trends beyond climate change. Also, most severe impacts are expected in regions that are already characterised by high levels of systemic human vulnerability.

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=== FAQ 8.4 | What can be done to help reduce the risks from climate change, especially for the poor? ===

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''Public and private investment in different types of assets can help reduce risks from climate change. Exactly which assets require investment depends on the specific situation. However, the provision of access to basic services, such as water and sanitation, education and health care as well as the importance of reducing inequity is shown within the assessment for many regions. The poor have fewer resources to invest, so in poorer countries greater public investment is needed. Legal, social, political, institution and economic interventions can alter human behaviour, though care must be taken that these do not amplify existing inequalities, create new inequalities or reduce future adaptation options.''

Adaptation can help to reduce risks for the poor and requires both public and private investment in various natural assets (e.g., mangroves, farmland, wetlands), human assets (e.g., health, skills, Indigenous knowledge), physical assets (e.g., mobile phone connectivity, housing, electricity, technology), financial assets (e.g., savings, credit) and social assets (e.g., social networks, membership of organisations such as farmer cooperatives). Often, the poor have the least to invest, so poverty can reduce adaptation options. Sometimes people migrate as a reaction to floods or droughts, though the poorest groups often lack the resources to move. Exactly what needs investing in to reduce risks varies according to the scale and livelihood system in need of adaptation. In general, risks can be reduced through a range of different technological and engineering approaches (for example, building sea defences to reduce storm surge impacts), as well as ecosystem-based approaches (such as replanting mangroves, altering the types of crops grown, changing the timing of farming activities, or using climate-smart agriculture or agroforestry approaches).

At the same time, legal, social, political, institutional and economic solutions can alter human behaviour (e.g., through enforcement of building codes to prevent construction on low-lying land prone to flooding, timely provision of weather information and early warning systems, knowledge-sharing activities, including adaptation strategies grounded in Indigenous knowledge, crop insurance schemes, incentives such as payments to stop people cutting down trees or to enable them to plant them and social protection to provide a safety net in times of crisis).

The poorest groups often require greater public adaptation investments. Efforts to support adaptation need to be mindful of reinforcing existing inequalities and introducing new ones, making sure they are inclusive, culturally sensitive and that the voices of all groups of people are heard. It is also important that adaptations which reduce immediate risks for the poor do not rule out adaptation options that could help them later on or which could cause them to increase their emissions. Political will is needed to put people at the centre of climate change risk reduction efforts, including support for their livelihoods.

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=== FAQ 8.5 | How do present adaptation and future responses to climate change affect poverty and inequality? ===

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''Present adaptation can help to reduce the current and possibly future impacts of climate change. Future responses to climate change can reduce poverty and inequality, and even help transition toward climate-resilient livelihoods and climate resilient development. Pro-poor adaptation planning is necessary to ensure future risks for the poor are being accounted for and the inequality underlying the poverty is being addressed.''

There are many ways in which poverty and inequality are influenced by climate change. The livelihood sources of the poor are likely to be affected and cumulative effects of losses and damages, and may influence future poverty. There are cases when present adaptation worsens future poverty and exacerbates inequality—this is called maladaptation. The risks of maladaptation are greater in societies characterised by high inequality, and in many cases the poor and most vulnerable groups are the ones most adversely affected.

Effective decision making in adaptation should be informed by past, present and future climate data, information and scenarios to cater for reliable plans and actions for climate-resilient livelihoods. Adaptation lessons from the past play an important role in decision making regarding responses to climate change. There is an emerging debate on the role of learning, particularly forward-looking (anticipatory) learning, as a key element or important aspect for adaptation and resilience in the context of climate change. Memory, monitoring of key drivers of change, scenario planning and measuring anticipatory capacity are seen as crucial ingredients for future adaptation and resilience pathways, and, hence overcoming maladaptation. Moreover, climate resilient development calls for ensuring synergies between adaptation, mitigation and development are maximised, while trade-offs, especially those affecting the poor, are minimised.

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