Climate change is costing trillions — and low-income countries are paying the price

Analysis of the effects of extreme heat shows that low-income, tropical countries have suffered the greatest financial losses.

Miryam Naddaf

Nature | November 07, 2022

A dried-up lagoon in Colombia, which is in a part of the world disproportionately affected by the cost of heatwaves.Credit: Juan David Moreno Gallego/Anadolu Agency/Getty

Climate change has so far cost the global economy trillions of dollars, but low-income countries in tropical regions have borne the brunt of these losses, finds a study that analysed the economic consequences of heatwaves worldwide over a 20-year period.

The research, published on 28 October in Science Advances¹, estimates that the global economy lost between US$5 trillion and $29 trillion from 1992 to 2013, as a result of human-driven global warming. But the effect was worst in low-income tropical nations, leading to a 6.7% reduction in their national income on average, whereas high-income countries experienced only a 1.5% average decrease.