We must confront the climate risks endangering 900 million poor people by UNDP, Oxford University, Global Hunger Index   17 Oct. 2025   Multidimensional Poverty Index Report reveals majority of the world's poor live in regions exposed to Climate Hazards   Nearly 8 in 10 people living in multidimensional poverty – 887 million out of 1.1 billion globally – are directly exposed to climate hazards such as extreme heat, flooding, drought, or air pollution, according to a new report released today by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford.   The 2025 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report “Overlapping Hardships: Poverty and Climate Hazards”, released ahead of the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, presents new evidence that the climate crisis is reshaping global poverty. By overlaying climate hazard data with multidimensional poverty data for the first time, the findings reveal a world where poverty is not just a standalone socio-economic issue but one that is deeply interlinked with planetary pressures and instability.   Exposure to climate hazards likely exacerbates the daily challenges faced by people living in poverty, reinforcing and deepening their disadvantages. The report finds that among those assessed to be living in acute multidimensional poverty – spanning health, education, and living standards – an overwhelming 651 million endure two or more climate hazards, while 309 million face three or four hazards simultaneously.   “Our new research shows that to address global poverty and create a more stable world for everyone, we must confront the climate risks endangering nearly 900 million poor people,” said Haoliang Xu, UNDP Acting Administrator. “When world leaders meet in Brazil for the Climate Conference, COP30, next month, their national climate pledges must revitalize the stagnating development progress that threatens to leave the world’s poorest people behind.”   The Burden of Concurrent Poverty and Climate Hazards   The findings emphasize that poor people globally are often confronting multiple, concurrent environmental challenges rather than a single one in isolation.   Of the 887 million poor people exposed to at least one climate hazard, 651 million face two or more concurrent hazards. Alarmingly, 309 million poor people live in regions exposed to three or four overlapping climate hazards while experiencing acute multidimensional poverty.   These individuals face a "triple or quadruple burden," often possessing limited assets and minimal access to social protection systems, amplifying the negative effects of the shocks.   Individually, the most widespread hazards affecting poor people globally are high heat (608 million) and air pollution (577 million). Flood-prone regions are home to 465 million poor people, while 207 million live in areas affected by drought.   “This report shows where the climate crisis and poverty are notably converging. Understanding where the planet is under greatest strain and where people face additional burdens created by climate challenges is essential to creating mutually reinforcing development strategies that put humanity at the centre of climate action,” said co-author, Sabina Alkire, Director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative.   The burden of exposure is distributed unevenly across regions and income groups. South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa are identified as global hotspots for these compounded hardships, accounting for the largest numbers of poor people living in regions affected by climate hazards (380 million and 344 million respectively).   In South Asia, the exposure is nearly universal; fully 99.1 percent of poor people in the region are exposed to one or more climate shocks (380 million people), with 91.6 percent (351 million) facing two or more, much higher than any other world region. Despite making momentous and historic strides in poverty reduction, South Asia must also accelerate climate action.   Across income groups, lower-middle-income countries bear the greatest burden of exposure of poor people to climate hazards, both in terms of absolute number and high proportion.   Some 548 million poor people in lower-middle-income countries are estimated to be exposed to at least one climate hazard, representing 61.8% of global poor people who are exposed to any climate hazard. Critically, over 470 million poor people in lower-middle-income countries confront two or more, concurrent climate hazards simultaneously.   Projected Future Inequity   “The burdens identified are not limited to the present but are expected to intensify in the future,” said Pedro Conceicao, Director of the Human Development Report Office, UNDP. Analysis of temperature projection data reveals that countries with higher current levels of multidimensional poverty are predicted to experience the greatest increases in temperatures by the end of this century.   These findings highlight the urgent need for global action to address the unequal burden of climate-related hazards on people living in multidimensional poverty. Confronting these overlapping risks requires moving from recognition to action, emphasizing the need for climate-resilient poverty reduction strategies, strengthened local capacities for adaptation, and scaled international redistribution and cooperative finance mechanisms.   http://www.undp.org/press-releases/new-global-multidimensional-poverty-index-report-reveals-nearly-80-worlds-poor-live-regions-exposed-climate-hazards http://hdr.undp.org/content/2025-global-multidimensional-poverty-index-mpi#/indicies/MPI http://ophi.org.uk/news/nearly-80-worlds-poor-live-regions-exposed-climate-hazards http://news.un.org/en/story/2025/10/1166125   Oct. 2025   Report highlights need for urgency to tackle global hunger as progress stalls   The possibility of achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goal of zero hunger by 2030 is slipping away. At the current rate of progress, it will take more than 100 years before low hunger levels globally will be reached, according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2025, published today.   “At the current pace, at least 56 countries will not reach low hunger—let alone Zero Hunger—by 2030,” Concern Worldwide Director of Strategy, Advocacy and Learning Reiseal Ni Cheilleachair warned today at the launch of the GHI report. “If progress remains at the pace observed since 2016, low hunger at the global level may not be reached until 2137—more than a century away.”   The GHI is published by Irish humanitarian organisation Concern Worldwide, German aid agency Welthungerhilfe, and the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict.   The report notes that the lack of progress reported in 2025 reflects overlapping and accelerating global crises such as escalating conflicts, climate shocks, economic fragility, and political disengagement.   “But hunger is not inevitable. It is a result of the lack of sustained political will, policy failure, policy financing, and implementation,” Ms Ni Cheilleachair said. “The international community needs to re-energise, re-commit and re-focus its efforts to tackle global hunger levels, prioritising communities and people who are most affected.”   In 2025 the global GHI score has improved only slightly compared to the 2016 score. The lack of progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is evidence of leaders’ policy ambivalence: stated ambitions are not being met with adequate resources or actions, the report notes. “Putting it in simple terms, talk is not being backed by action,” Ms Ni Cheilleachair said.   Instead of correcting course, many decision-makers are ignoring or underinvesting in commitments that they have already made. They are doubling down on de-stabilising policies. Vital monitoring and early-warning systems which are used to track hunger are being undermined by security risks, bureaucratic impediments, and funding cuts that hamper aid delivery and data collection.   The 2025 GHI shows that hunger is considered ‘alarming’* in seven countries: Burundi; Democratic Republic of the Congo; Haiti; Madagascar; Somalia; South Sudan; and Yemen. In another 35 countries, hunger is designated as ‘serious’. Many countries are slipping backward: in 27 countries with low, moderate, serious, or alarming 2025 GHI scores, hunger has increased since 2016.   The report’s authors also express concern that there are data gaps which prevent the calculation of GHI scores in countries including Burundi, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the occupied Palestinian territories, Sudan and Yemen. These gaps obscure the true extent of hunger in these countries. Available indicators, however, point to deteriorating conditions and suggest that the reality is more alarming than the current figures reveal.   The GHI 2025 is published at a time when humanitarian funding is being cut and investment in military spending is increasing. Assistance is increasingly limited to only the most acute cases, leaving many without support.   As systems to measure and respond to hunger are dismantled or weakened, a dangerous loop is created where humanitarian needs are invisible and so attract no assistance, the report warns.   The GHI 2025 report does contain some positive developments, including global improvement in undernourishment levels in parts of South and Southeast Asia, and Latin America. It notes that sustained investments can drive meaningful progress in reducing hunger.   http://www.concern.net/press-releases/report-highlights-need-urgency-tackle-global-hunger-progress-stalls http://www.globalhungerindex.org/
	We need a new approach to combatting global poverty by UN Office for Human Rights   Oct. 2025   Beyond growth: We need a new approach to combatting global poverty, says Olivier De Schutter - UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights:   "The widely held belief that increasing economic growth will solve global poverty is wrong and leading the world down a dangerous path of spiralling inequalities and environmental breakdown. We must urgently change course, abandoning GDP as a measure of progress and refocusing on what truly makes a difference to people’s lives.   For close to a century we have been told, over and over, that economic growth is the answer to global poverty. Grow the economy – politicians, economists and development practitioners have long maintained – then sit back and watch as all prosper.   The reality is wildly different. Today we live on a planet that has never been wealthier, with global billionaire wealth growing by roughly $5.7 billion a day in 2024. Yet the number of people still living in poverty – around 3.5 billion according to the World Bank – has barely changed since 1990.   Far from lifting all boats, economic growth has created vast and growing gaps between the rich and the poor. The relentless exploitation of natural resources it demands is also pushing our planet beyond its limits.   As I set out in my most recent report to the UN, it is people in poverty that are paying the price for the deadly climate crisis this has created. Over the past three decades, more than 90 per cent of climate related deaths have occurred in developing countries.   Yet despite the gross inequalities and ecological breakdown staring us in the face, we have become so accustomed to the idea that “more is better” that governments continue to be elected – and even held to account by international organizations – based on their ability to increase gross domestic product (GDP).   Yet, as a measure of societal progress, GDP is deeply unsatisfactory: it takes into account neither the essential work done within households and communities, predominately by women, to support others and the commons, since that work is unremunerated; and ignores the ecological and social costs of economic activity – biodiversity loss, pollution, the mental health impacts stemming from the pressure of economic competition.   In low-income countries this obsessive quest for growth has led to disastrous political decisions for people in poverty, from the commodification of natural resources once freely available to them, to corporate tax cuts and the dismantling of labour protections. In high-income countries, growth-driven policies have created a “burnout economy”, trapping millions in precarious work in order to maximize the profits of a tiny elite. In both, the planet on which we depend for our very existence has become collateral damage.   Economic growth is not the panacea it is made out to be. Even if it were the solution to poverty, the Earth simply cannot provide the limitless resources or absorb the waste that endless expansion requires. It is clearly time to reimagine the fight against poverty.   This is why, in July 2024, I presented a report to the UN on Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth: to show governments that reducing poverty can no longer be justified as an excuse for destructive economic growth.   This idea is slowly gaining ground within the UN. Following a request expressed in the Pact for the Future adopted at a 2024 UN Summit, UN Secretary General António Guterres appointed a High Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP to propose recommendations for new ways to measure progress that go beyond GDP.   New metrics are important, but let’s be clear: they will not suffice. If we are serious about eradicating poverty and transforming our outdated economic system, we must be far more ambitious. We need concrete measures that shift economies away from profit maximization and towards fulfilling human rights.   Promising avenues include better rewarding work according to its ecological and social value, particularly to people in poverty – wage increases for essential workers, for example, and pay caps for those in destructive industries such as financial trading, fossil fuels or tobacco; job guarantee programmes – whereby the government guarantees a job to anyone willing and able to work; and debt cancellation and restructuring so that creditor repayments don’t take precedence over social spending. It is frankly absurd that 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on interest payments than on either education or health.   Also included will be the policies required to finance these changes, such as progressive taxation – including wealth and inheritance taxes – tackling tax evasion, and greater international cooperation on tax and debt. These are the bold yet achievable measures that must shape the next generation of anti-poverty efforts. We need a new roadmap for eradicating poverty that fulfils the rights of all, not just the privileges of a few.   http://www.srpoverty.org/2025/10/17/international-day-for-the-eradication-of-poverty-2025/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/07/end-dangerous-fixation-gdp-way-eradicate-global-poverty-un-expert http://www.srpoverty.org/2025/10/15/globalynyt-un-rapporteur-economic-growth-will-not-end-poverty/ http://www.srpoverty.org/   Oct. 2025   UN experts urge binding accountability for agribusiness to safeguard global food security   A handful of powerful corporations now control vast portions of global agricultural production, input markets and food supply chains, a concentration of power that undermines the autonomy of small-scale farmers, exacerbates inequality and endangers the ecological foundations of our food systems, UN experts warned today.   In their reports to the UN General Assembly, the Working Group on peasants and rural workers and the Special Rapporteur on the right to food warned that the growing dominance of transnational corporations and industrial agribusiness in global food systems poses an escalating threat to food security, rural livelihoods, and human rights.   “Peasants and small-scale farmers feed the majority of the world’s population with healthy and diverse food, yet they are increasingly marginalised and dispossessed by the expansion of corporate-driven food systems,” the experts said. “The current model of agribusiness, supported by powerful States, prioritises profit over people and the planet — this must change.”   Corporate practices, including large-scale land acquisitions, monopolisation of seeds and agrochemicals, food speculation, exploitative contract farming, and the escalating corporate capture of decision-making spaces traditionally held by peasants and rural workers in food system governance have cumulatively created deep dependencies that erode rural resilience and undermine the autonomy of those who sustain our food systems.   Digital technologies are further reshaping food systems, often extending corporate control through the capture of agricultural data. These trends, combined with the climate crisis, have further jeopardised the right to food for millions.   The experts reaffirmed that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) provides a crucial legal framework for addressing systemic injustices faced by small-scale farmers, fisherfolks, pastoralists and rural agricultural workers.   “States have an obligation to regulate corporate activity, prevent human rights violations and abuses, and ensure access to justice for victims,” they said.   “Voluntary commitments are not enough. The rights enshrined in UNDROP — including rights to land, seeds, biodiversity, and participation — must be implemented through binding laws and robust accountability mechanisms. To ensure digitalisation serves equitable and sustainable food systems, data governance must protect farmers’ rights, knowledge, and autonomy.”   Peasants and rural workers harmfully affected by corporate misconduct, from land grabs and toxic exposure to wage theft and forced evictions, still struggle to access effective remedies.   The Working Group and the Special Rapporteur called on all governments, the private sector and UN agencies to place small-scale farmers, fisherfolks, pastoralists and rural workers at the center of food policies and global governance.   “Food is not a commodity — it is a human right,” they said. “We must act now to ensure that those who feed the world can live and work with dignity, free from exploitation and fear.”   Ahead of the upcoming session of the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Respect to Human Rights, the experts urged all Member States to prioritise the finalisation of a legally binding treaty to regulate corporations and financial institutions and hold them accountable for human rights violations and abuses.   “A binding treaty is essential to close the accountability gap and rebalance power in our food systems. Without enforceable obligations, corporate impunity will continue to erode human rights and the planet’s capacity to feed itself sustainably,” they said.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/un-experts-urge-binding-accountability-agribusiness-safeguard-peasants http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a80213-corporate-power-and-human-rights-food-systems-report-special http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a80180-right-participation-peasants-report-working-group-peasants-and
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