Extreme heat is dangerous for millions of people. What is “cooling poverty”

Differences in demographics, infrastructure and adaptation capacity determine the intensity with which populations are affected. “Systemic cooling poverty” is widespread but deeply unequal in 28 countries — most of them developing countries.

Imagine yourself walking along Ipanema beach on a summer afternoon in Rio de Janeiro. The sand is golden, there is a refreshing sea breeze, there is the shade of a sun hat and a cold drink in your hand.

Now look up. Clinging to the slope, just a few hundred meters away, is the Vidigalone of the favelas in the Brazilian city. Thousands of people live there in an authentic heat trap: metal roofs, no parks, no formal public transport networks.

In the sprawling suburbs that stretch nearby, families face the same suffocating nightswhile concrete sidewalks radiate heat long after sunset.

When there are no cool public spaces where did I run awayr, nor sources of drinking water that guarantee any relief, extreme heat becomes inevitable.

Rio is far from being an isolated case. Last summer, Europe suffocated. In Spain, maximum temperatures of 46 °C were recorded. In Portugal it reached 46.6 °C. France experienced the second hottest June since 1900.

In the USA, more than 150 million people were in extreme heat. In South Asia, West Africa and Latin America, extreme heat is not just seasonal. But the consequences of the heat are not distributed equitably. They vary between countries, regions and neighborhoods.

As demographic differencesinfrastructure and adaptation capacity determine the intensity with which populations are affected, explain the researchers Antonella Mazzone, Enrica De Cian and Giacomo Falchetta in an article on .

In a new one, published last week in Nature SustainabilityMazzone, De Cian and Falchetta demonstrate that this is «systemic cooling poverty» is widespread, but deeply unequal, in 28 countries — mostly in the process of development.

Among the 3 billion people represented in our sample, nearly 600 million live in severe systemic cooling poverty. The people of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa They are the ones that bear the heaviest weight.

Still, countries with similar levels of extreme heat may experience very different results. Indonesia and Bangladesh are both exposed to dangerous, humid heat that affects nearly their entire population, but Indonesia’s stronger physical infrastructure and more developed healthcare translate into lower levels of systemic cooling poverty.

In cities, the vulnerability is shaped by infrastructures physicssuch as buildings, streets, pipes and green spaces, and by social infrastructuressuch as services, institutions and support networks, in any case distributed unevenly.

The poorest residents, as a rule, have less access to air conditioningtree-shaded streets and parks, as well as adequately insulated homes.

The cooling capacity It’s not just a technological issue. Present the Air conditioning as the response to extreme heat is problematic. Access to air conditioning is deeply unequal, both between and within countries — the vast majority of the world’s population simply does not have it.

The air conditioning It is also a voracious consumer of energythe. It increases households’ annual electricity bills by more than a third, on average. That overloads electrical networks when energy demand reaches its peak.

Increased demand for electricity accelerates climate changes that are at the origin of the heat crisis, causing temperatures abroad to rise even further. The production and slaughter of the units also entails its own environmental costs, with dangerous materials that can contaminate soil, water andr.

Os factors that most determine whether heat becomes dangerous They are the conditions in which people are born and live.

O where you live, the way the neighborhood is builtwhether there are trees or drinking water points nearby, the ventilation conditions of the home, whether the workplace offers protection and whether public services respond to rising temperatures — all of this affects survival.

Also the age, health status, incomegender identity and discrimination play a determining role, being able to dictate whose suffering is recognized and whose suffering remains invisible.

Responses to heat are shaped by social and physical environments in which people live.

In many places, air conditioning has displaced ancestral knowledge and intergenerational practices developed over centuries for living with heat — including ways of building, moving, eating and to rest. The loss of these practices can leave people more exposed and less resilient.

Systemic cooling poverty does not refer to a person’s ability to afford air conditioning, but rather to how the surrounding infrastructure, institutions, and urban design expose it to harmful heat and then fail in their protection.

It goes beyond housing to workplaces, schools and healthcare systems, where heat can have serious consequences for health, productivity and well-being. It goes even further, to systemic causes that determine who suffers most: inequality, discrimination, patriarchy, ableism and racism.

Vulnerability to heat is not an accidental result. Urban planning decisions that eliminate green space, housing policies that allow poorly ventilated buildings, labor laws that leave outdoor workers without protection, public health systems that fail those most exposed — all contribute.

Rethinking the concept of cooling poverty changes the way researchers think about solutions. Thermal justice isn’t just about reducing heat exposure. It also means doing it fairly, and holding accountable the people and institutions whose policies and planning decisions have made some neighborhoods hotter and some households less able to keep cool.

When we ask «who designed these conditions?», we can understand who has the power to change them.

Effective responses require acoordinated action in urban planningin public health, housing and labor regulation: expanding access to drinking water, rehabilitating buildings and planting trees, while reducing discrimination.

But the people most affected must participate in designing solutions. Their experiences reveal what the heat really means, day after day.

By understanding and assessing systemic cooling poverty, we can identify the best way to achieve thermal justice for those most at risk from extreme heat, the researchers conclude.