Climate Adaptation and Resilience

Globally, the overlap between climate change damages and extreme poverty is striking. There is a growing realisation that the world's extreme poor, who are concentrated mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, are being disproportionately affected by climate change, with the evidence base on rising damages continuing to grow.

Climate change is projected to push 130 million more people into extreme poverty by 2030, as most social protection systems remain unprepared to address climate related losses (Tesliuc et al., 2025). This will deepen a crisis that is already concentrated among the world's most vulnerable populations, raising the central question of how policy can help those most at risk to adapt to these damages.

Policymakers therefore face a dual challenge: reducing extreme poverty while protecting households from worsening climate shocks. Governments are already committing trillions of dollars to social protection and poverty alleviation; given that climate shocks are a growing driver of vulnerability to poverty, the design of these programmes must incorporate a central focus on climate risks.

Work under this theme concentrates on this dual challenge, covering research areas including adaptation to climate shocks; agricultural livelihoods; insurance and risk management; resilient pathways out of poverty; and social protection.