As world leaders enter climate talks, people in poverty have the most at
stake
[November 05, 2025]
By MELINA WALLING and ELÉONORE HUGHES
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — When summer heat comes to the Arara neighborhood
in northern Rio, it lingers, baking the red brick and concrete that make
up many of the buildings long after the sun has gone down. Luis Cassiano,
who's lived here more than 30 years, says he's getting worried as heat
waves become more frequent and fierce.
In poor areas such as Arara, those who can afford air conditioning —
Cassiano is one — can't always count on it because of frequent power
outages on an overloaded system. Cassiano gets some relief from the
green roof he installed about a decade ago, which can keep his house up
to 15 degrees Celsius (about 27 degrees Fahrenheit) cooler than his
neighbor's, but he still struggles to stay comfortable.
“The sun in the summer nowadays is scary,” Cassiano said.
As world leaders come to Brazil for climate talks, people like Cassiano
are the ones with the most at stake. Poor communities are often more
vulnerable to hazards like extreme heat and supersized storms and less
likely to have the resources to cope than wealthier places.
Any help from the climate talks depends on countries not just laying out
pledges and plans to lower emissions. They also need to find the
political will to implement them, as well as come up with the billions
of dollars needed to adapt everything from harvests to houses to better
withstand human-caused climate change.
All of it is sorely needed for the 1.1 billion people around the world
who live in acute poverty, according to the United Nations.
That's why many have lauded the choice of Belem, a relatively poor city,
to host these talks.
“I am pleased that we will be going to a place like this, because this
is where climate meets poverty, meets demand, meets financing needs, and
meets the reality of the majority of the population of this world that
are impacted by climate change,” said Inger Andersen, executive director
of the U.N. Environment Programme.
Even in wealthy countries, the poor face climate impacts
It's not just poor people in poor countries who suffer when poverty and
climate change collide. A U.N. Development Programme report found that
even in highly developed countries, 82% of people living in poverty will
be exposed to at least one of four climate hazards: high heat, drought,
floods and air pollution.
People in poverty are more vulnerable to climate change for several
reasons, said Carter Brandon, a senior fellow at the World Resources
Institute who works on the economics of climate change and the finances
of adapting to it.
They might not have the money to leave areas like inundated deltas or
floodplains, landslide-prone hillsides or farmlands regularly scorched
by drought. Nor to rebuild after a disaster hits. And those financial
hits can be worsened by other problems like health issues, lack of
education or lack of social mobility.
“It’s not just, climate destroys buildings or bridges or property. It
destroys the livelihoods of families. And if you don’t have savings,
that’s really devastating,” Brandon said.
Crop yields suffer in many places, but worst in poor countries
Even relatively developed countries with more ways to adapt will see
some farm yields drop significantly, according to a UNDP analysis of
global agriculture under different warming scenarios.
But poorer countries will be more severely affected, said Heriberto
Tapia, head of research and strategic partnerships advisor at the UNDP
Human Development Report Office.
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Luis Cassiano cools off with water that falls from his green roof at
his home in Arara, a poor neighborhood, in Rio de Janeiro on Jan. 9,
2020. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo, File)
 Tapia said Africa, with more than
500 million people in poverty, is a big concern. Many depend on crop
yields for their livelihoods.
Most of the world's 550 million small agricultural producers are in
low- or middle-income countries, working in marginal environments
and more vulnerable to climate hazards, said Ismahane Elouafi,
executive managing director of CGIAR, the Consultative Group for
International Agriculture Research.
Elouafi thinks technology can help ease the climate pressure on many
of those farmers, but also noted that many can't afford it. She's
not confident that this year's COP will provide enough money to help
with that.
Will holding COP30 in the Global South make a difference?
Brazilian officials thought Belem, on the edge of the Amazon and not
a rich city, would be a forceful reminder for negotiators of the
difficulty that climate change and rising extreme weather are
bringing to millions of people every day.
“I heard there were a lot of negotiators who have been complaining
of being put on a bunk bed, or in terms of sharing a room, but this
is the reality of most people around the world,” said Nafkote Dabi,
climate policy lead at global development organization Oxfam. “So I
think it makes things real.”
But some experts were skeptical, despite the recent UNDP report
saying the need to take action is urgent.
“I wish that they had said more about what exactly is the rapid
action that needs to be taken, because I don’t think rapid action is
going to come out of COP,” said Kimberly Marion Suiseeya, an
associate professor at Duke University who studies how international
policies impact people in rural and forested areas.
With poverty ‘not budging,’ why focus on climate change?
Although the public narrative has long been that humankind has
generally been making progress on alleviating poverty, numbers show
that now there’s a “stagnation,” said Pedro Conceição, director of
the Human Development Report Office at the UNDP. “The numbers are
high and they are not budging.”
In a memo ahead of COP30, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates called for
a shift from prioritizing reducing emissions to focus on reducing
human suffering. On climate change, “there’s no apocalyptic story
for rich countries,” he said. “The place where it gets really tough
is in these poor countries.”
But Conceição said it’s wrong to think about poverty reduction and
climate as a tradeoff.
The idea that climate is only a future problem, “or it’s about
things out there like glaciers melting, needs to be completely
thrown out and replaced with the notion that actually the two
agendas are one and the same,” he said.
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Associated Press journalists Jennifer McDermott and Seth Borenstein
contributed to this report.
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