Air pollution has profound impacts on welfare, causing more deaths globally than malnutrition, AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Poorer households are often more vulnerable because of residential sorting, limited access to health care, and financial constraints. This report comprehensively assesses the negative effects of air pollution in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, including from a distributional point of view, by leveraging multiple data sources: administrative data, surveys, satellite imagery, first-hand real-time data from outdoor, indoor, and portable monitors collected for this study, and government monitors 

Climate change is accelerating, and harmful weather events—such as extreme storms, droughts, heat waves, or wildfires—are becoming more frequent and severe. Lower-income countries suffer more deaths and lasting losses from disasters than richer countries. Climate shocks push vulnerable households into poverty and cause small businesses to fail, reversing development gains.

"Rethinking Resilience" urges developing countries to adopt policies that empower individuals, households, farms, and firms to take proactive measures. Current approaches rely too heavily on government programs and investments, such as subsidies and cash transfers, which are reactive rather than preventive. Developing economies lack the resources of high-income countries, making them more vulnerable.

To build resilience, developing countries should focus on raising household incomes, delivering reliable public information, and developing robust insurance markets. Resilience measures should prioritize income growth, reliable information, and private insurance, with infrastructure and public interventions rounding out the package. Utilizing this five-pronged strategy, governments can empower households, farms, and firms to build resilience successfully. 

We investigate key climate change hazards affecting Nepali households and livelihoods: river flooding, heat exposure, drought, landslides, and air pollution. We analyse the distributional impacts of these hazards by combining spatial distributions of exposure with measures of socio-economic vulnerability and coping ability. While landslides are more likely to occur in the northern mountainous areas of Nepal, the southern parts of Nepal are at higher exposure to river flooding, heat, and drought hazards. Coping ability is highest in the southern lowlands (Terai) and urban settlements, which leaves northern, mountainous areas more vulnerable, despite being less affected. New human settlements in mountainous areas are built on steeper slopes as flat land in valleys has become scarce, which increases their vulnerability to floods and landslides. Forward modelling (2041-2060) shows increasing severity of heat and intensifying extreme rainfall. The increase in extreme precipitation events affects particularly the historically less-affected western provinces with relatively low economic development. Overall, the northern parts of the country will require concerted support to withstand shocks, and in the south, investments in agricultural livelihoods will be needed to support adaptation to climate risk. Proactive, spatially targeted investments are needed by all levels of government to mitigate the welfare impacts of these diverse climate change hazards. National investments in human capital are required to transform Nepali livelihoods in line with a green transition.