Extreme climate disasters exacerbated the global inequalities in sustainable development

The frequent occurrence of extreme climate disasters worldwide poses a significant threat to the sustainable development of human society. We establish a panel data model to investigate the impacts of extreme climate disasters on global sustainable development inequality among countries, employing the entropy weight method to construct a composite SDG score, the Kakwani index to measure inequality, and a two-way fixed effects panel model for analysis. The findings indicate that although the current state of global sustainable development inequality has been alleviated to some extent, extreme climate disasters can still exacerbate this inequality, with effects lasting for five years or more. The sustainable development inequality in middle- and low-income countries is particularly affected by such disasters. Compared to floods, extreme climate events such as wildfires, extreme temperatures, and storms have a greater global impact on sustainable development inequality. The effect of extreme climate disasters on sustainable development inequality also varies notably across regions. North and South America are mostly impacted by extreme temperatures, while Africa, the Middle East, East and South Asia, and Europe and Central Asia are mostly affected by wildfires, floods, and storms, respectively. This study provides empirical evidence on the impacts of climate disasters on sustainable development inequality among countries, offering valuable insights for formulating targeted policies to reduce these disparities.