Part 3
The Trap in Action
The Inheritance Trap does not follow a single pathway. Case studies show how different combinations of climate exposure, debt pressure and constrained public finance collide around the systems children depend on.
Kenya
Kenya
World Vision’s work in Mandera County provides a window into how climate pressures become visible in children’s lives. Evidence collected from drought-impacted communities found that when water sources become scarce and journeys become longer, children can spend hours each day collecting water rather than attending school. As one account described it, families were no longer choosing between education and household chores, but between education and survival.24
The story from Mandera reflects wider pressures across Kenya. The country recently experienced its most severe drought in four decades alongside major El Niño impacts, disrupting livelihoods, food systems and access to essential services. Around 300,000 children are displaced by droughts and floods each year. Across the country, 47% of children live in multidimensional poverty, 1.1 million are malnourished and 2.8 million are out of school.25
Image: A child collects water in Samburu, Kenya. Longer journeys to collect water can leave children with less time in the classroom. © 2025 David Nderitu/World Vision
"Around 300,000 children are displaced by droughts and floods each year."
Responding to these pressures requires investment on a scale Kenya currently struggles to mobilise. The Government estimates that implementing the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) between 2020 and 2030 will require approximately $62 billion, including $43.9 billion for adaptation alone, yet only 13% is expected to be financed domestically.26
At the same time, the fiscal room available to make those investments is increasingly constrained. In Kenya, as in many jurisdictions, debt service places a substantial claim on public resources before funding reaches frontline services. In FY2024/25, total public debt service was equivalent to 71.2% of ordinary government revenue and 39% of total government expenditure.27 This leaves Kenya balancing substantial debt-service obligations against the resources needed for essential services and the investments required to strengthen climate resilience.
These pressures are reinforced by the structure of climate finance itself. Adaptation remains underfunded, receiving only 11.7% of tracked climate finance flows nationally28, and only 20-25% of public spending in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid regions, where children are most exposed. 29 At the same time, most of the finance intended to help Kenya respond to climate vulnerability is itself delivered through borrowing. Between 2021-2024, at least 73% of international climate-finance commitments to Kenya were made through debt instruments rather than grants.30
Kenya illustrates the challenge of financing climate resilience in a context of growing fiscal pressure. The resources required to strengthen adaptation and resilience are substantial, yet a growing share of public revenue is already committed to debt service. For children, those constraints are felt through the systems that help communities prepare for, withstand and recover from climate shocks.
LAOS
LAOS
Children growing up in East Asia and the Pacific are now experiencing six times as many disasters as their grandparents, reflecting a broader pattern of increasingly frequent and overlapping climate shocks across the region.31 In Laos, children increasingly describe climate shocks as part of everyday life. In World Vision’s child-led research, children identified heavy rain, flooding, landslides and extreme temperatures among the hazards they experience most frequently. The impacts were felt most acutely through their physical health, education and mental wellbeing. Nearly 7 in 10 children reported being worried or very worried about climate change and disasters, yet preparedness levels remain low or moderate, with girls reporting greater concern and feeling less prepared than boys.32
Image: In Laos, Noy, 11, sits with his two younger brothers on the steps of their flooded home. © 2026 Ammala Thomismith/World Vision
NEARLY 7 IN 10 CHILDREN
reported being worried or very worried about climate change and disasters
These experiences reflect wider national pressures. Flooding is Laos's most common recurring disaster,33 while UNICEF reports that air pollution linked to shifting climate conditions is contributing to pneumonia, already the leading cause of death among young children in Laos.34 Climate pressures are also shaping migration patterns, with research from World Vision and the Stockholm Environment Institute finding links between climate impacts, livelihoods and migration among children and youth across Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.35 Together, these pressures are placing growing strain on the systems children rely on to stay healthy, continue learning and remain protected.
Responding to recurring climate shocks requires sustained investment in resilience, preparedness and essential services. Yet the scale of need is growing rapidly. This is precisely where Laos faces growing constraints. The government’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) is $4.7 billion by 2030. This constitutes the cost of its conditional mitigation target alone, leaving adaptation needs much less fully costed within national planning documents.36 Meanwhile, in 2024 alone, 69 natural disasters affected more than 271,000 people and caused losses equivalent to around 2% of GDP, damaging schools, health facilities, irrigation systems, water infrastructure and transport networks across the country.37 These are not isolated losses, but recurring costs that place growing pressure on public resources and reinforce the need for sustained investment in climate resilience.
A further complication is that Laos enters this period of rising climate risk with exceptionally constrained fiscal space. The IMF and World Bank’s latest assessment classifies Laos as in debt distress and assesses its public debt as unsustainable. External debt service was projected at around 59% of government revenue in 2025, even after substantial debt-service deferrals.38 At the same time, spending on essential services has been squeezed: combined education and health spending has fallen from 4.9% of GDP in 2013 to an estimated 2.3% in 2023, while public health spending has fallen to around 4% of the national budget, less than half the level the World Bank recommends by 2030.39 These trends do not establish that debt service alone caused the decline in social spending, but they illustrate the extremely limited fiscal room available to maintain services while also responding to recurring climate shocks.
Laos therefore illustrates the Inheritance Trap in particularly stark form: not a country failing to recognise climate risk, but one struggling to finance the response required. Climate shocks recur with alarming regularity, and protecting children from them requires sustained investment in resilience and public services. Yet high debt-service obligations constrain the fiscal space available for those investments alongside other demands on a severely stretched public budget. For children, these pressures converge around already strained systems – including education, health and disaster preparedness – reducing the resources available to strengthen resilience before the next shock arrives.
BANGLADESH
BANGLADESH
World Vision Bangladesh works on the frontline of one of the world’s most climate-exposed childhoods. Following severe flooding in Bandarban, families reported losing food stocks, livestock and gardens. Some reduced the number of meals they could eat a day, while children faced increased risks from waterborne diseases and adolescent girls struggled to maintain menstrual hygiene.40
These experiences are not exceptional. Bangladesh is one of the most climate-exposed countries in the world for children. Cyclone Remal and the floods that followed affected over 13 million people in 2024, including 5 million children,41 while damaging 1,839 government primary schools and forcing many of those still standing to serve as emergency shelters instead of classrooms.42 UNICEF's 2026 Children's Climate Risk Report found that all of Bangladesh's roughly 59 million children are now exposed to at least one climate hazard, with 89.5% (53 million) exposed to three or more overlapping hazards simultaneously. Bangladesh received the maximum possible score for river flooding risk.43
Image: In Mirpur, Dhaka, rapid urban growth is placing increasing pressure on the services, infrastructure and environment that children rely on, creating new risks for families living in densely populated communities. © 2026 Ben Adams/World Vision
Climate change vulnerability is unevenly distributed across five ecosystems: coastal, riverine, haor wetlands, drought prone regions, the hill tracts that rapidly expanding urban settlements. The children, adolescent girls, persons with disabilities (PWD), climate displaced families and households living in poverty face unprecedented impact of climate change and disproportionate barriers to protection and recovery.
"Bangladesh is one of the most climate-exposed countries in the world for children."
Responding to this scale of recurring shock requires sustained investment in resilient schools, climate-adapted water systems, disaster preparedness, social protection and recovery systems capable of helping families withstand repeated events. Yet Bangladesh enters this challenge with one of the narrowest domestic tax bases in the world. Bangladesh’s tax-to-GDP ratio was just 6.7% of GDP in 2025, which is less than half of the 15% widely regarded as necessary to finance essential development needs.44 At the same time, recurring floods and cyclones are estimated to cost the country around 2.2% of GDP annually.45
Debt pressure makes these constraints even more visible. Bangladesh was recently reclassified from low to moderate risk of debt distress, with limited space to absorb shocks.46 The IMF and World Bank’s debt sustainability analysis highlights climate change and natural disasters as important risks to debt sustainability: major shocks can damage physical and human capital, weaken long-term productivity and place additional pressure on public finances. Its natural-disaster stress test shows public debt and debt-service indicators deteriorating substantially following a major shock, although other shocks produce more severe pressures on some external debt indicators. The assessment therefore emphasises that building climate resilience – through resilient public infrastructure, stronger disaster preparedness and support for adaptation – is important to keeping debt on a sustainable path.47
At the same time, much of the finance intended to strengthen resilience arrives in a form that adds to those pressures. According to the Inheritance Trap Index, around 92% of international climate-finance commitments recorded for Bangladesh between 2021 and 2024 were made through debt instruments rather than grants.48 For one of the world's most climate-exposed child populations, protecting children from future climate shocks increasingly relies on financing that must itself be repaid in the future.
Bangladesh illustrates a particularly acute form of the Inheritance Trap. Few countries combine such extensive child climate exposure with such limited domestic fiscal capacity. Every child in the country is exposed to at least one climate hazard, while the country’s debt sustainability analysis explicitly recognises that climate change and natural disasters can undermine debt sustainability and that building resilience is crucial to keeping debt on a sustainable path. At the same time, much of the finance intended to build that resilience arrives as debt. The result is a country where climate vulnerability, constrained fiscal space and debt-financed adaptation pressures converge around the systems children rely on.
Banner Image: Cyclone Freddy destroys nearly 135 000 hectares of crops. Now, nearly a month after Tropical Cyclone Freddy made landfall in this central province of Mozambique, Atire feels it is imperative for him to help his family find food by fishing in nearby streams and flooded areas. © 2023 Antonio Massipa/ World Vision