2023 Volume 79 Issue 27 Article ID: 23-27040
Climate change can cause economic losses and increase poverty. However, climate change mitigation measures can also cause economic losses and increase poverty. Previous studies have not assessed the impact of climate change and climate change mitigation on poverty simultaneously. This study aimed to quantitatively assess the impact of climate change and climate change mitigation on poverty worldwide. The results show that, while poverty impacts of climate change can be reduced in the scenario that achieves the 2°C target of the Paris Agreement, the impacts of climate change mitigation measures will be larger, and the number of poor people will be 26-42 million in the short term and 2-10 million in the long term, which is larger than in the scenario that does not achieve the 2°C target. This is based on a uniform global carbon price. This is due to the fact that climate change mitigation measures using carbon taxes based on a uniform global carbon price would cause significant economic losses in low-income countries. Climate change mitigation measures need to be discussed.
