Safeguarding the Right to Housing Under Climate Change

Authors: Ariana Karamallis & Alejandra Rivera

By 2030, it is estimated that three billion people – about 40% of the world’s population – will be living in vulnerable housing conditions. Inadequate or substandard housing is particularly vulnerable to climate hazards, from fire and flood to windstorms and extreme heat.

The right to housing is a fundamental human right recognized by the United Nations. It encompasses the right to safe, peaceful and dignified shelter. Despite the wide and official recognition of this basic human right, more than one billion people still live in substandard housing and informal settlements today.

The impacts of climate change are becoming more severe daily, with disasters such as strong winds, heavy rains, and floods leaving 14 million people homeless every year. 240 climate- related disasters were reported in 2023 alone. Inadequate housing is disproportionately inhabited by the poor, resulting in billions of the world’s most vulnerable people being the most severely affected by climate change, despite contributing the least to carbon emissions. Given this reality, we must urgently address the need for climate resilient housing that puts the right to adequate housing at the center of the agenda.

Understanding Climate Resilient Housing

Housing is climate-resilient when it is designed and constructed to withstand and adapt to the variety of hazards posed by climate change. These homes are built to maximize occupant safety, minimize environmental impact, enhance energy efficiency, and are capable of withstanding a variety of extreme weather events ranging from hurricanes to floods to heatwaves.

These homes are also accessible and affordable, ensuring that vulnerable communities have safe and stable housing options. Furthermore, climate-resilient housing incorporates designs and policies that prioritize the health and comfort of residents, particularly in the face of increasing climate variability and extreme weather.

Climate-resilient housing (CRH) is crucial for protecting lives, property, and resources in the face of unpredictable and increasingly severe climate, due to high carbon emissions. It not only enhances individual safety and comfort but also contributes to broader community and environmental resilience.

The Right to Housing

“Housing is a right, not a commodity”¹

The right to housing is the fundamental human right to have shelter, a place to call ‘home’, live in peace, safe, and in dignity. It includes freedoms such as protection against forced evictions and arbitrary interference with one’s home, as well as entitlements like security of tenure and equal access to housing.

This right is part of human rights law. It was recognized as part of the right to an adequate standard of living in article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in article 11.1 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Other international treaties have since reinforced this right, making it relevant to all countries.

Furthermore, for housing to be considered ‘adequate’, it needs to meet some criteria: these include security of tenure, availability of services and infrastructure, affordability, habitability, accessibility, appropriate location, and cultural adequacy. In practical terms, ‘adequate housing’ should provide safe drinking water, sanitation, and energy for cooking, lighting, and heating; be affordable without compromising other human rights; offer protection against environmental threats –which is particularly important in the face of climate change adverse impacts; be accessible to disadvantaged groups; be situated near employment and social facilities; and respect cultural identity.²

All these criteria are important to ensure housing can be the basis for people’s stability and security. Hence, housing is also an ‘enabling right’ meaning that when it is properly satisfied, it enables people to fulfill other needs such as food resourcing, education, employment, and other components of human flourishing.

For example, Mexico has embedded the right to adequate housing in Article 4 of the Mexican Constitution stating that “every family has the right to enjoy decent and dignified housing”. This constitutional recognition has significantly shaped Mexico’s housing policy, framing it as a government obligation rather than just an aspiration. Consequently, there has been a more dedicated and sustained effort to improve existing housing conditions across the country. Having adequate housing recognised in the national constitution and as a policy objective has driven housing programs that are multidimensional–focusing on affordability, habitability, and access to basic services throughout the country. Mexico’s policy framework emphasizes renovation and upgrading of substandard housing, particularly in urban areas, and has promoted initiatives to improve public infrastructure and basic services in informal settlements as well. While challenges remain, the constitutional right to housing is a legal and policy environment that prioritizes it as a basic necessity for human dignity and human development in Mexico.

Climate change: A threat to housing rights

Climate change poses a significant threat to the right to housing by exacerbating existing challenges and creating new ones. For example, rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and changing weather patterns are causing damages to homes and widespread displacement in both urban and rural areas, but especially in unplanned and informal settlements, small islands and low-lying coastal areas.³ The destruction of homes by hurricanes, floods, and wildfires not only leaves people without shelter but also disrupts communities, local economies, safety, and security.

Vulnerable populations such as low-income groups, indigenous peoples, and residents of informal settlements, are disproportionately affected by climate-related housing disruptions. These groups often lack the resources to respond and adapt to changing weather conditions or recover from natural disasters, leading to prolonged displacement, housing insecurity, and further disabling other areas of life.

For example, in Bangladesh, rising sea levels and increasingly severe monsoons have led to widespread flooding, forcing millions to abandon their homes in coastal areas: “Estimates show that a one meter combined sea level rise and storm surge leads to a loss of more than 4,800 square kilometers of land (roughly 3.2 percent of the country); a two meter combined sea level rise and storm surge leads to the inundation of nearly 12,150 square kilometers (roughly eight percent of the country)”.⁴

Unfortunately, the case of Bangladesh is severe and not unique. Many low-lying coastal areas around the world are highly vulnerable to sea-level rise, floods, and therefore millions of (formal and informal) homes are at risk. Hence, there is an urgent need for global action to address climate change and its impacts on vulnerable states and vulnerable populations.

A dual challenge: Climate Resilience and Housing Rights

To address this dual challenge, we need resilient housing solutions that are affordable, accessible and attractive to governments, the private sector, and low-income and vulnerable populations. These solutions do exist –the question is how to amplify and enable replication and adoption at scale. This requires a systems change approach that addresses the main barriers to resilient housing: lack of adequate policies, finance, and technology. Mobilizing people and their governments, money, and technology to transform regulation, financing and construction systems for the structural improvement of housing can address these challenges at scale.

One of the key methodologies Build Change has identified to address these barriers is retrofitting,reinforcing or upgrading existing homes to make them resistant and resilient to disasters. Retrofitting existing homes is more affordable, better for the environment, and better for homeowners and communities overall compared to building new. The climate crisis is the most urgent problem of our time, and retrofitting offers a solution that makes it possible for adequate housing to reach the communities who need it most while safeguarding our planet’s future.

Coupled with a global qualitative and quantitative affordable housing deficit, there is an urgent need to decarbonize the built environment to meet critical climate targets. Incrementally retrofitting existing homes to be climate resilient is one of the most affordable, effective and environmentally sustainable solutions to advance the right to adequate housing. In fact, by applying the findings from Build Change’s 2023 study Saving Embodied Carbon by Strengthening Existing Housing, we can save 4.8 gigatons of CO2 emissions while addressing more than 268 million inadequate households globally– all at a fraction of the cost of building new.

Integrating retrofitting into urban development and climate adaptation policies is no longer optional. A “retrofit-first” approach allows communities to upgrade their homes incrementally while maximizing existing resources and reducing environmental impact. Preventative upgrades that make housing climate resilient offer a promise to reduce carbon emissions and make it possible for those most vulnerable to climate change impacts to adapt and build resilience today.

Best practices of Climate Resilient Housing

In the Philippines, increasing access to incremental loan products for home improvements coupled with the provision of technical assistance has enabled thousands of women-led households in low-income rural and peri-urban communities nationwide to retrofit their homes to be resilient to increasingly frequent and severe typhoons and earthquakes. With many homes doubling as their place of work, this means women’s livelihoods are not threatened when storms come. It also means they can build assets and wealth instead of remaining stuck in a cycle of poverty as the result of repeatedly spending their hard-earned money on home repairs.

In Honduras’s flood-prone Sula Valley, Build Change’s climate adaptation work, implemented in partnership with the Honduran Red Cross, strengthens the first floor of people’s homes and enables the addition of a second “dry” floor to keep families safe during severe flooding. The Sula Valley is one of Honduras’ most important economic centers, so enabling families to stay in their homes and communities is imperative not only for their own livelihoods but for the country’s economy. By adding a second floor to these homes, families have a refuge from increasingly severe and frequent flooding. They are able to wait out the storms and keep their essential utilities and valuables safe from water damage.Families have also been supported to install solar panels and rainwater collection tanks to ensure access to water and electricity during storm-related power outages. Retrofitting homes to be climate resilient not only enables homeowners to withstand the next storm, but enacts sustainable improvements that improve quality of life. The successful first phase of this program in 2022 was identified by the Latin American Development Bank as one of the top 10 innovations for social impact in Latin America.

Build Change has worked in Indonesia for the past twenty years, starting with home repairs and reconstructions following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated Aceh province. Since that event, nearly 250,000 Indonesians are living in safer housing or learning in safer schools because of Build Change’s work. In 2019, Build Change worked with the Indonesian Ministry of Housing and the World Bank to assess risks associated with home construction quality and provided advice on home retrofitting alternatives to increase Indonesia’s resilience to climate and disaster-related risks, with emphasis on the use of homeowner driven processes. By developing new standards for resilient housing, and influencing policy at the local and national level, thousands of Indonesia’s homes have been made safer in frequent storms and earthquakes.

Conclusion

Addressing climate resilience in housing is of utmost importance to ensure people’s rights to safe, secure and dignified shelter is upheld amidst climate challenges. In this endeavor, policymakers, investors, and urban professionals all have crucial roles. Policymakers, development banks and agencies, and real estate investors should work together to implement, resource, and enforce climate resilient housing plans and standards, ensure new and existing housing can withstand extreme weather events and protect residents, especially the most vulnerable groups. Likewise, built environment professionals like urban planners should integrate and prioritize climate considerations into their designs and master plans.

Climate resilient housing should not only meet immediate needs but be planned, designed, and envisioned to be resilient against the impacts of climate change in decades to come. In this way, everyone, especially climate vulnerable communities, would be able to access safe and resilient homes upholding the right to housing and the multiple social and economic benefits that derive from housing stability.

List of resources on climate resilient housing and the right to housing:

References

Source: OHCHR https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-housing/human-right-adequate-housing
OHCHR. The human right to adequate housing, Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing. https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-housing/human-right-adequate-housing
OHCHR. Climate change and the right to housing. Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing
https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-housing/climate-change-and-right-housing
WBG (Kumari Rigaud, Kanta, Alex de Sherbinin, Bryan Jones, Jonas Bergmann, Viviane Clement, Kayly Ober, Jacob Schewe, Susana Adamo, Brent McCusker, Silke Heuser, and Amelia Midgley). (2018). Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration. Washington, DC: The World Bank. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2018/03/19/groundswell—preparing-for-internal-climate-migration