Environment and Energy

Poverty Eradication, MDGs and Climate Change

Climate change presents significant threats to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals especially those related to eliminating poverty and hunger and promoting environmental sustainability. Variations in rainfall and extreme weather events are likely to place additional strains on poorer countries already facing serious challenges due to food insecurity, indebtedness, HIV/AIDS, environmental degradation, armed conflicts, economic shocks and the effects of globalization.

Climate change poses a threat to the achievement of the MDGs and related national poverty eradication and sustainable development objectives. For example, climate change may pose a threat to food security through erratic rainfall patterns and decreasing crop yields, contributing to increased hunger. Furthermore, adverse climate change impacts on natural systems and resources, infrastructure, and labor productivity may lead to reduced economic growth, exacerbating poverty. These effects threaten the achievement of MDG 1. Loss of livelihood assets, displacement and migration may lead to reduced access to education opportunities, thus hampering the realization of MDG 2. Depletion of natural resources and decreasing agricultural productivity may places additional burdens on womens’ health and reduce time for decision-making processes and income-generating activities, worsening gender equality and women’s empowerment (MDG 3). Increased incidence of vector-borne diseases, increases in heat-related mortality, and declining quantity and quality of drinking water will lead to adverse health effects threatening the achievement of MDGs 4,5,6 and 7. In general terms, the realization of MDG 7 may be jeopardized through climate change negatively impacting quality and productivity of natural resources and ecosystems, possibly irreversibly, threatening environmental sustainability. Climate change, a global phenomenon, calls for a collective response in the form of global partnerships (MDG 8).

Urgent steps are needed to help the poorest countries adopt climate change strategies that reduce the vulnerability of their populations and improve their adaptive capacity, while working towards long-term economic development plans that incorporate sustainable energy systems and land use policies, and other measures that will help mitigate the growing accumulations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

UNDP has been involved in an interagency effort to explore and summarize the current state of knowledge on adaptation to climate change and the need for its integration into poverty eradication and sustainable development efforts. The 10 agencies involved (UNDP, UNEP, World Bank, ADB, AfDB, GTZ, DFID, OECD, and EC) worked collaboratively on producing a paper entitled, “Poverty and Climate Change: Reducing the Vulnerability of the Poor through Adaptation".

After several consultative meetings and review by various professionals in poverty and climate change areas in both developing and developed countries, the document was launched on 10 June 2003 at the 18th Session of the Subsidiary Bodies of the UNFCCC in Bonn.

To view the document, please click on the following links:

In addition, UNDP and the European Commission are engaged in a joint initiative on poverty and the environment aimed at identifying concrete policy recommendations and practical measures that address the environmental concerns of the poor in developing countries.

Go to: UNDP/UNEP Poverty and Environment Initiative
Go to: UNDP’s Poverty Reduction Programme