Low-development regions suffer far higher losses in climate disasters, study warns

sHDI trajectories between 1990 and 2020. Credit: Nature Communications (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-73873-9

People living in regions with lower scores on the Human Development Index face a substantially higher risk from climate-related disasters, even when these are not unusually severe. This is the key finding of a new study led by researchers at Leipzig University. The study analyzed more than 7,000 climate-related disasters worldwide between 1990 and 2020 and combined these data with subnational indicators of human development. The work is published in the journal Nature Communications .

The results show that the impacts of climate-related disasters are not determined by the strength of the hazards alone. Instead, socioeconomic conditions strongly influence how severely people are affected. Regions with low Human Development Index scores experienced disproportionately higher human losses across most disaster types, especially floods and storms. For storms, people in low-development regions face an average fatality risk more than eight times higher than those in very highly developed regions; for floods, the risk is three times higher.

"Our results show that climate disaster risk is not only a question of how intense the hazard is. It is also a question of who is exposed to it and under what social conditions they live," says Khalil Teber, a research fellow at Leipzig University's Institute for Earth System Science and Remote Sensing and lead author of the study. "Particularly in countries that experienced rapid socioeconomic development in recent decades, for instance India or China, where you live matters a lot in defining how severe the impacts of a disaster could be."

A key innovation of the study is that it examines these effects on a global scale while drawing on subnational data, which allows for a highly detailed assessment. This is important because, on the one hand, climate-related disasters rarely affect entire countries, and on the other hand, socioeconomic conditions can vary significantly across regions. By using these subnational human development data, the researchers showed that inequalities within countries further amplify disaster risk. In low- and medium-development regions, people living in areas that lag behind their national average are particularly vulnerable.

Ensuring climate adaptation measures are fair and effective

"This is an important finding for climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction," says Miguel D. Mahecha of Leipzig University, senior author of the study. "If we want adaptation to be fair and effective, we need to understand vulnerability at the regional level. And we need high-precision socioeconomic data on societal vulnerabilities to understand where people are most at risk."

On the global scale, the share of disaster exposure in low-development regions has declined over the past three decades, reflecting development progress in many parts of the world. Nevertheless, low-development regions continue to experience disproportionately high human losses. The study therefore emphasizes that reducing vulnerability and strengthening adaptive capacity remain among the most effective ways to reduce future disaster impacts.

"According to the projections, climate hazards will continue to intensify in many parts of the world," says Melanie Krause, who contributed to the study from a socioeconomic perspective. "But their humanitarian consequences are not fully predetermined. Investments in human development, infrastructure and preparedness in general can save lives."

Publication details

Khalil Teber et al, Inequality in human development amplifies climate-related disaster risk, Nature Communications (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-73873-9

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Low-development regions suffer far higher losses in climate disasters, study warns (2026, June 18)

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