A disaster in a poor country has to kill 16 times as many people as one in a rich country to get any attention from scientists.
Analysis of 59,000 articles reveals a massive, documented bias in what climate impacts are actually studied. Researchers overwhelmingly focus on events in wealthy nations while ignoring more frequent or deadly crises in the Global South. We assume that science is an objective record of what is happening on our planet. This study proves that our understanding of climate change is filtered through a lens of national wealth. It means that the people most affected by global warming are effectively invisible to the very experts trying to solve it.
Global synthesis of peer-reviewed articles reveals blind spots in climate impacts research
research_square · rs-6095740
Abstract Understanding how climate hazards such as floods, droughts, and storms turn into disasters requires detailed socioeconomic impact data. While extensive research documents these impacts, the rapid growth of the literature hinders effective synthesis. Here, we present the first global stocktake of scientific literature on the socioeconomic impacts of climate hazards by systematically screening over 59,000 open-access articles using machine learning. We find significant regional biases in