Summer has hit and with it the first major heatwave: the UK and France recorded some of their hottest May days ever on Monday and Tuesday, with London seeing a provisional all-time May record high of 35.1°C just as Paris hit highs of roughly 34°C. At the same time an intense and prolonged heatwave is raging in India, with temperatures in several cities crossing 45°C, highlighting issues such as poor urban planning which contributes to night-time temperatures remaining dangerously high – putting millions at risk.
This week we look at how extreme and rising temperatures affect people around the world, what systemic factors lead to their exposure and what we can do to ensure that people are thermally safe.
“Vulnerability to extreme heat is not just about income and energy poverty. It’s about the intersection between climatic, infrastructural, and socio-institutional factors,” says CMCC researcher Giacomo Falchetta as he introduces the first multidimensional assessment of Systemic Cooling Poverty across 28 countries in the Global South, revealing how vulnerability to extreme heat is driven not only by climate but also factors such as infrastructure, inequality, health and work conditions.
Systemic Cooling Poverty describes situations in which people cannot stay thermally safe because of overlapping deprivations, from inadequate housing and lack of green and blue spaces to poor access to health care, protective measures and fair working conditions. Instead of focusing exclusively on common markers – such as access to air conditioning – the index looks at five dimensions: climate exposure, infrastructure and assets, social and thermal inequalities, health, and education and working standards.
“This concept and navigation tool that helps organize the combination of conditions that lead individuals, organizations, or communities to encounter health risks, due not only to climate change and extreme heat, but also to a range of other infrastructural factors,” says co-author of the study Antonella Mazzone Mazzone, who invented the Systemic Cooling Poverty concept, explains that vulnerability to extreme heat is not just a matter of income and energy poverty but rather about the intersection between climatic and socio-institutional factors.
Across the three billion individuals represented in the study’s dataset, more than two thirds are found to be thermally unsafe in at least one dimension, and almost 600 million people live in regions with severe Systemic Cooling Poverty, facing multiple forms of deprivation at the same time. Going into more detail, education and working standards emerge as the prevalent driver, affecting around 2.2 billion people, followed by climate exposure, infrastructure and health.
“This shows that there are many factors that influence Systemic Cooling Poverty: transport, building materials, laws and regulations around work and exposure to heat, as well as access to services,” says CMCC researcher and lead author Giacomo Falchetta. “For example, a city in which everyone has air conditioning is not necessarily one in which there is no Systemic Cooling Poverty.”
[Image above: A radar chart describing the share of each country’s national population that is classified as deprived with respect to each SCP dimension: climate, education and working standards, health, social and thermal inequality, and infrastructure and assets. Falchetta et al ]
Heat risk is not determined by climate or income alone. Some structurally hot countries – such as Indonesia, Egypt and Jordan – record relatively low Systemic Cooling Poverty Index values because they perform better on non‑climatic dimensions like infrastructure and access to services. Others, including Ethiopia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, appear much more vulnerable despite milder average temperatures, due to deep infrastructural gaps and social inequalities.
“Among the countries covered by our assessment, Indonesia, Egypt and Jordan are among the countries with the lowest overall levels of Systemic Cooling Poverty […] whereas other countries that are not as exposed to extreme heat are less prepared […] Systemic Cooling Poverty cannot just be reduced to an issue of income and climate as there are more complex risk factors,” says CMCC researcher Enrica De Cian,
Significantly, the study reveals only a weak linear correlation between national GDP per capita and Systemic Cooling Poverty, indicating that income alone is a poor proxy for systemic vulnerability to heat.
This kind of study could also be applied to countries in the Global North where infrastructures and social perceptions of heat are very different yet systemic vulnerabilities are rapidly emerging.
The framework developed by the researchers is designed as a tool that can help inform policy and planning: it can help identify which combinations of factors – for example, lack of green and blue spaces, inadequate housing materials, limited access to health services, or unsafe working conditions – are driving vulnerability in each context. For cities and local governments, this means being able to target measures where adaptation measures are most needed.
A multidimensional assessment of systemic cooling poverty in the global south
by Giacomo Falchetta, Antonella Mazzone, Shikha Bhasin, Marinella Davide, Paula Bezerra, Kristian Fabbri, Gaia Bertarelli, Anna Pistorio, Ilaria Dal Barco & Enrica De Cian