Climate change will be felt much more strongly in the developing world, hampering its development.

This is an open-ended prediction with no deadline. Judge it on the evidence available when it is researched. True: authoritative assessments find that climate change impacts fall disproportionately on developing countries and are hampering their development, for example through losses to GDP, agriculture, health or poverty reduction. Mostly true: impacts are documented as disproportionate, but the evidence that they hamper development is weaker or limited to some regions. Mixed: the evidence is split on whether impacts are larger in developing countries, or on whether development is harmed. Mostly false: the effects are documented only narrowly or depend on contested projections. False: authoritative assessments find that developing countries are not more strongly affected, or that their development has not been hampered.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 ADB Says Climate Change Could Reduce GDP in Developing Asia and the Pacific by 17% by 2070 Asian Development Bank · 31 October 2024

   “Rising sea levels and falling labor productivity would cause the greatest losses, with lower income and fragile economies hit hardest.”

2. E2 [PDF] Climate Change in Developing Countries: Global Warming Effects, Transmission Channels and Adaptation Policies Banque de France (working paper WP 822, authors Olivier de Bandt, Luc Jacolin & Thibault Lemaire) · July 2021

   “Taken together, our results suggest that global warming will reinforce development traps, hindering further adaptation to climate change, particularly in the countries with the lowest levels of income given their lower resilience and higher socioeconomic vulnerability.”

3. E3 [PDF] Climate Change in Developing Countries: Global Warming Effects, Transmission Channels and Adaptation Policies Banque de France (working paper WP 822, authors Olivier de Bandt, Luc Jacolin & Thibault Lemaire) · July 2021

   “in warmer low- and middle-income countries (but not in temperate high-income countries), higher temperatures negatively affect output growth because of reduced agricultural output, suppressed productivity of workers exposed to heat, slower investment and poorer health.”

4. E4 Summary for Policymakers | Climate Change 2022 ... - IPCC IPCC (Working Group II, Sixth Assessment Report) · 2022

   “Overall adverse economic impacts attributable to climate change, including slow-onset and extreme weather events, have been increasingly identified (medium confidence).”

E3 summarises research finding that higher temperatures reduce output growth in warmer low- and middle-income countries but not in temperate high-income ones, through lower farm output, worker productivity, investment and health. That supports both parts of the claim: impacts are uneven, and they hold back development. E1 (ADB) and E2 (Banque de France) say lower-income and fragile economies will be hit hardest and that warming will reinforce development traps, but they are projections, not documented harm. The IPCC excerpt (E4) finds adverse economic impacts overall without singling out developing countries. So the uneven impact is well supported, but the evidence that development is already being held back rests largely on one summarised study and on projections.