###### Abstract  
Climate change impact is one of the most important global concerns at present. In the building environment, climate-responsive design may help to enhance the adaptation capacity through a better building energy performance. In this sense, this study addresses an adaptation strategy to reduce the effects of global warming on low-income houses, for which bioclimatic passive strategies should be prioritized, aiming to improve environmental sustainability. The technique chosen to be analyzed is thermal mass for cooling. Thus, the goal is to evaluate the energy consumption and thermal performance impact of implementing Bermed earth-sheltered walls on bedrooms in low-income housing (LIH), considered deployed in tropical climate regions. For that, a base scenario (1961-1990) is considered, alongside two future scenarios: 2020 (2011 to 2040) and 2050 (2041 to 2070), both considering the effects of climate change, according to the Fourth Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The methodologies adopted are (i) computational simulation to estimate the annual energy consumption demand and (ii) quantification of the cooling degree-hours (CDH), with the subsequent comparative analysis based on Brazilian regulation for energy efficiency in buildings (RTQ-R). The predictions show that there will be an increase in the energy consumption for cooling and in the CDH in both 2020 and 2050 scenarios, regardless of using a Bermed earth-sheltered wall. Nonetheless, this adaptive measure enables the building to be resilient in terms of cooling energy demand in the 2020s, since it is 12.3% lower than in the building without the strategy use, compared with the base scenario. In the 2050s, resilience was almost reached with energy consumption only 10.7% higher, for the same conditions described previously. Therefore, Bermed earth-sheltered walls work as a climate-responsive design strategy to face the potential global warming effects, promoting building sustainability in tropical climate regions. t 1 2021 11 420 increases in the tropics, therefore, the potential effect of climate change in the building environment is a critical issue, especially concerning its design and operation. Furthermore, global warming will directly affect the thermal behavior of buildings, increasing hot season cooling, and decreasing cold heating demand, raising its energy consumption during the operational phase [3]. Thus, the strategic framework conceived to mitigate and adapt buildings environments to climate change increases the importance of the thermal mass effect as a strategy to counterattack its impacts, especially within warm regions located in South America with tropical Savannah climate (Aw), which is the second most common climate in the world, covering 11.5% of the world's land area, 60.1% of South America [4], and 81.4% of the Brazilian territory [5]. Mitigation and adaptation are two strategies to address climate change. The first focuses on the causes (accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) whereas the second on adaptation to the impacts [6]. Adaptation may respond mainly by reducing or eliminating the risks of climate change impacts, and on the building environment, it can be done by enabling the capacity of adaptation through a better building energy performance. In the last decade, some studies have evaluated the potential of buildings' energy efficiency adaptation measures to face climate changes effects. In Australia, a study investigated, in five regional climates (from cold to hot humid), the potential impact of climate change on the heating and cooling energy requirements of residential houses. It was observed that energy-efficient or high star rating houses may experience fewer absolute changes in energy requirement due to their better thermal insulation [7]. In the Netherlands, three traditional residential house projects were used to investigate the effectiveness of passive climate change adaptation measures.