# **1. Introduction**

Climate change is a threat to the objective of sustainably eradicating poverty. Poor people are more often and harshly affected by climate change as they have fewer mechanisms to cope, more losses, and less support to recover. But even those not in poverty can suffer negative impacts that condition their future welfare prospects. Climate change can affect people's wellbeing through various channels, and it can also have an impact on natural disasters, leading to further negative consequences for people. The identification of the specific impact of climate change on natural disaster events such as floods, landslides, droughts, and storms is challenging and complex to estimate. However, as Hallegatte (2014) mentions, climate change has played an increasing role over time, dramatically escalating natural hazards, and displaying heterogeneous effects on people's well-being depending on the type of hazard. In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the acceleration of climate change has shown a sharp increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events (World Bank, 2022). In recent years, some of the deadliest natural catastrophes have occurred, including the earthquakes in Haiti (230,000 deaths in 2010 and 2,248 deaths in 2021), the Brumadinho mudslide in Brazil (300 deaths in 2019), and hurricanes Maria (3,059 deaths in 2017) and Eta (183 deaths in 2020) (UNDP, 2022). The number of people in the region affected by natural disasters has also increased substantially over the last decades. Between 2000 and 2019, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) indicates that 41 million people have been affected by floods, while droughts have impacted the lives of approximately 53 million people (GuhaSapir, et al., 2022). In this study, we look at natural disasters and the mechanisms of households to cope with them.

This study is framed within a climate risk framework, with a specific focus on the household perspective. As per the terminology of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), disaster risk is the result of the interplay between hazard, exposure, and vulnerability dimensions. Hazard refers to the possible future occurrence of natural or human-induced physical events that may have adverse effects on vulnerable and exposed elements (White, 1973; UNDRO, 1980; Cardona, 1990; UNDHA, 1992; Birkmann, 2006b). Exposure refers to the inventory of elements in an area in which hazard events may occur (Cardona, 1990; UNISDR, 2004, 2009b). And vulnerability refers to the propensity of exposed elements such as human beings, their livelihoods, and assets to suffer adverse effects when hazard events impact. Moreover, for international organizations such as the World Bank, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the European Commission, and the ISO standards, among others, the term vulnerability encompasses a variety of concepts and elements, including the sensitivity or susceptibility, the weaknesses, and the lack of capacity to cope and adapt that favor the potential adverse effects.

As previously mentioned, there is a connection between climate change and the increased intensity and frequency of natural hazards. These hazards can impact the well-being of households, potentially leading to poverty. Vulnerability to poverty of a household is understood as the probability that households will fall into poverty. It is an ex-ante condition, a latent variable that is not directly observable but depends on the future household welfare. The primary distinction between poverty and vulnerability to poverty is that the latter 2