Lesson 2: Climate Extremes And Poverty

Video Lesson

Competencies

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

• Explain the concepts of climate extremes,
• Discuss how extreme weather and climate events exacerbate poverty,
• Describe how flooding events worsen poverty levels, and
• Explain the poverty traps and critical thresholds.

Brainstorming question

How do you explain the linkage between climate extremes and poverty in developing countries?

Key words

The concepts of climate extremes

Dear Online Learner!

Climate extremes refer to excess temperature and rainfall events and environmental hazards happening following those excessive occurrences.

Figure 5.4 Global temperature changes (1940 – 2100) (IPCC, 2018)

Following those temperature and precipitation changes, extreme climatic events (heat and cold waves, floods, droughts) have been taking place over wider arid and semi-arid areas of the Earth. These extreme events have been finally interacting with the numerous aspects of human livelihoods.

Extreme climate events and poverty

Dear Online Learner!

• Extreme climate refers to the occurrence of an excessive value of the climatic (weather) elements below or above the normal thresholds over a specific geographic area and time (e.g. excessively low or high temperatures, rainfall, flooding, droughts, hail storms, heat waves, tornadoes, etc.).
• Extreme climates result damage frequently and repeatedly; households face difficulties in coping with the shocks. In such cases, people fall into an endless poverty vicious cycle which can be referred to as a poverty trap – meaning people lack the necessary resources to escape from poverty. This is because the extreme climatic shocks cause both ‘ex-post’ and ‘ex-ante’ impacts on the ‘incidence’ of poverty.

climate extremes intensify community, household, and individual levels of poverty through

• injuring infrastructure,
• distorting employment opportunities
• violating health, education, and housing services.
• impede socioeconomic development, reduce food security, and expand poverty.

Climate extremes result in destitution and poverty traps on the poor households by forcing people to consume or sell their assets during disasters and sicknesses. This deters the development of their human capital and undermines their capacity to adapt and cope-with future shocks that eventually lead to the cycle of climate extreme poverty syndromes

The root causes of such extreme climate initiated poverty conditions are:

Because it is the main statement and the others below it are lists

• The root causes of such extreme climate initiated poverty conditions are:
• Vulnerability to droughts, flooding, typhoons, and locust invasions,
• Lack of good governance (absence of proper law enforcement),
• Remoteness from service centers (lack of all-weather roads),
• Property right related problems including tenure insecurity,
• Lack of adequate infrastructure and services (roads, water, electricity, education, health),
• Poor access to markets and weak social networks,
• Demographic related characteristics (e.g. household sizes, age & sex compositions & dependency levels),
• Unemployment and underemployment levels, and Shelter and nutrition-related problems.

Impact duration	Direct impacts	Indirect impacts
Short-term	Loss of income and earnings	Loss of working persons through death, injury, and illness
	Loss of assets (housing, savings, crops, land & properties)	Loss of labour and low productive output (e.g. crops, industry)
	Forced consumption of limited assets and savings	Loss of assets (physical and social infrastructure damage)
	Limited access to food, water, and healthcare	Diversion of government and private spending to responses
	Abandoning schooling and health- care plans	Short-term supply chain disruptions
Long-term	Loss of fertile land	More spending on food imports
	Staple food price increment	Increased debt to recovery needs
	Food security reduction (malnourishment & stunting)	Budget allocation for reconstruction and recovery
	Lowering educational attainment and life expectancy	Reduction of exports and increased imports
	Reduce future resilience and coping capacity	Long-term supply chain disruption
	Cause long-term subsidiary impacts	Relocation of productive sectors
		Reduced income and consumption
		Low investment in physical infrastructure and human development (slow socioeconomic development)

Table 5.1 Climate extreme and poverty linkage impacts on human livelihoods

Figure 5.5 Vulnerability to climate change by 2050 and 2100 (UN, 2008)

Flooding Events and Poverty

Dear Online Learner!

• Spontaneous flash floods often damage walkways, plantations, infrastructures, and stream banks and cause widespread loss of livelihood assets.
• Field crops and domestic animals are damaged by the floods.
• The loss of similar physical assets and property.
• extreme flooding events destroy, human settlements and urban infrastructures (water and power supply services) which causes displacements.
• Such events not only devastate properties but also disrupt the informal social networks of people in the affected areas

These occasions further aggravate food insecurity and livelihood perils over households and then result in chronic poverty

Poverty traps and critical thresholds

• Poverty traps occur when extreme climates push poor people to be poorer and poorer
• Grave thresholds or irremediable harms occur from the merger of numerous non-climate related variables.
• Coupled with the already existing poverty, the coping capacity of the poor further weakens and exposes them to aggravated lingering poverty traps.
• Recent studies on extreme climate and poverty linkages indicated that: Extreme weather accompanying climate change is increasing and will probably pose more calamities in the 2030s.
• Eleven countries that are at most at risk of disaster-induced poverty are Bangladesh, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda.