Shifting climate patterns are some of the major challenges of our time. These effects are becoming even more severe and their impacts will be felt increasingly in the future. People in rural areas and informal settlements will experience the effects of climate change most strongly. Droughts, heat waves, floods, landslides, cyclones or coastal erosion add more and more stress to these communities, food production and threatening housing as slums are often built in environmentally-fragile locations such as steep slopes, floodplains, swamps, coastal shores and river banks. Due to poverty and lack of education, slum dwellers often have low capacity to deal with these dramatic impacts.

One billion people live in urban slums today. They have been built outside the ‘formal’ system of laws and regulations that are meant to ensure safe, resilient structures and settlements. Climate change can trap slum residents in a cycle of poverty and vulnerability, as each climate disaster results in loss of life, assets, and disruption, while it limits their abilities to cope and adapt.