ND-GAIN Climate Vulnerability Index
Annual country ranking by climate vulnerability and adaptive capacity, used to steer climate finance and to assess a territory's political and sovereign risk.
The ND-GAIN Climate Vulnerability Index, published annually by the University of Notre Dame, ranks nearly every country in the world along two combined dimensions: its exposure and sensitivity to the physical effects of climate change on one hand, and its economic, social and institutional capacity to adapt to them on the other. A country can therefore appear highly vulnerable not only because it suffers severe climate hazards, but also because its institutions and financial resources limit its ability to guard against them, which sets the index apart from a simple measure of physical exposure to disasters. For international donors and climate funds, the index serves as an objective criterion for directing adaptation financing primarily toward the most vulnerable and least self-sufficient countries, including in allocating resources from the loss and damage fund. For reinsurers and political and sovereign risk analysts, the index offers a complementary indicator to traditional credit ratings, capturing a dimension of structural fragility to climate change that conventional rating agencies only partly factor into their country risk analysis.
In the ND-GAIN ranking, countries such as Somalia, Chad and the Central African Republic rank among the most vulnerable in the world, combining heavy drought exposure with adaptive capacity ranked among the lowest, a profile used directly to prioritize access to funding from the loss and damage fund created at COP27 in 2022.
ND-GAIN, Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative index
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