One-fifth of the world’s population is at high risk of climate-related hazards

This paper estimates the global population at high risk of climate-related hazards by combining household-level vulnerability data with local exposure to four types of events: agricultural droughts in rural areas, floods, heatwaves, and cyclones. Under current climate conditions, 4.5 billion people are expected to experience these hazards at intensities exceeding hazard-specific thresholds chosen to capture the likely occurrence of systemic impacts within a lifetime.

The authors find that almost 1 in 5 people (19%) are at high risk from climaterelated hazards based on data from 160 countries for 2021. In Sub-Saharan Africa, nearly everyone who is exposed is also considered highly vulnerable and therefore at high risk. SubSaharan Africa exhibits the highest vulnerability rates in 2021 (ranging from 8% to 71%) across all dimension except access to finance (30%), which is also high in the Middle East and North Africa (39%). In contrast, Asia has higher rates of population exposure on average, but lower vulnerability. Population exposure is similar in North America and Latin America and the Caribbean at the region level; however, the share at high risk differs substantially because very few individuals are classified as highly vulnerable in North America under the globally consistent vulnerability thresholds applied in this study