Climate change is poised to disproportionately impact low-income and vulnerable populations. Global temperature increases, increasingly severe storms, and irregular patterns of drought and rainfall are estimated to push up to 130 million people into poverty by 2030. By 2050, as many as 200 million may be forced to migrate1. This highlights the universal nature of climate change; it doesn’t respect borders, impacting vulnerable regions and populations regardless of where emissions originate.
Rekha Unnithan, Managing Director and Global Head of the Private Equity Impact at Nuveen, illustrates how climate change and inequality are inextricably linked. Nuveen believes there is significant commercial opportunity to drive the transition to the low carbon economy and serve vulnerable, low income consumers concurrently.
Additional Resources
PE Impact 2025 Whitepaper - Energy Transition Investments: Energy Efficiency & Grid Resilience
The built environment is under pressure from increasingly stringent regulations as well as shifting consumer sentiment, requiring building owners and managers to consider the current and future climate attributes of their assets.
The Nuveen Private Equity Impact team seeks to address the defining global challenges of our time — climate change and inequality — by investing in businesses that drive an inclusive transition to a low carbon economy to drive attractive risk adjusted returns for our investors.
Endnotes
Sources
1 Bhargava, Ruma, and Megha Bhargava. “The climate crisis disproportionately hits the poor. How can we protect them?” World Economic Forum, 13 Jan 2024, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/01/climate-crisis-poor-davos2023/ Accessed 23 Apr 2024
