Key facts
- Systemic Cooling Poverty describes situations in which people cannot stay thermally safe because of overlapping deprivations
- 28 countries involving over 3 billion people from the Global South covered in the study, with over two thirds of people found to be thermally unsafe
- Almost 600 million people live with severe Systemic Cooling Poverty across multiple dimensions
- Education and working standards, rather than income, are the most prevalent drivers, affecting around 2.2 billion people.
CMCC's upcoming paper, "A multidimensional assessment of Systemic Cooling Poverty in the Global South", provides the first large‑scale, multidimensional measurement of Systemic Cooling Poverty (SCP) – defined as situations in which individuals are "prevented from attaining thermal safety as a result of intersecting forms of systemic deprivation". 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.
"Systemic Cooling Poverty is a 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 and CMCC collaborator Antonella Mazzone, who invented the Systemic Cooling Poverty concept and 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."
Heat risk is not determined by climate or income alone. The study also finds a weak linear correlation between national GDP per capita and systemic cooling poverty, indicating that income is a poor proxy for vulnerability. Some structurally hot countries – notably Indonesia, Egypt and Jordan – record relatively low SCP values because they perform better on non‑climatic dimensions such as infrastructure, access to services and policy frameworks. In contrast, countries like Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where average temperatures are less extreme, emerge as highly vulnerable due to deep infrastructural gaps, social inequalities and health and work‑related deprivations.
The analysis also reveals strong within‑country inequalities, with some regions significantly more deprived than national averages. This provides an evidence base for targeting adaptation policies to specific hotspots.
As extreme heat events become more frequent and intense, from record heatwaves in Europe to lethal hot spells in South Asia, and the Middle East, the question of "how we adapt to rising temperatures" is becoming central to public health, urban planning and social justice. The paper shows that billions of people are already approaching or crossing physiological limits in contexts where housing, infrastructure, work conditions and institutions are not prepared to cope.
