Percentage of people at high risk from climate-related hazards (globally)

The percentage of people at high risk from climate-related hazards globally is defined as the number of people globally who are both exposed to a set of key climate-related hazards (floods, droughts, cyclones, and heatwaves) and are also highly vulnerable (i.e., have a propensity to be adversely affected or unable to cope with the impacts), as a share of global population. Specifically, people are counted as at high risk from climate-related hazards if they are exposed to at least one hazard and are identified as highly vulnerable on at least one dimension of vulnerability.

This indicator follows the traditional risk framework in which risk is the combination of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. The hazard is the potential occurrence of an extreme event; exposure counts the people affected in the location of the hazard; and vulnerability is the propensity or predisposition of these people to be adversely affected. Here vulnerability is proxied by a set of indicators measuring (i) the physical propensity to experience severe losses (proxied by the lack of mobility and access to basic infrastructure services, such as water and electricity); and (ii) the inability to cope with and recover from losses (proxied by low income, not having education, not having access to financial services, and not having access to social protection).

The indicator currently considers a subset of climate hazards using historical data, a subset of vulnerability dimensions, and an aggregation methodology similar to approaches used for multidimensional poverty measures. The methodology will be revised over time as new data are collected and methodologies adopted.