David Wheeler at CGD has updated his interactive map of climate risk (this is the link for the interactive map, not the screen grab picture to the right – no point in clicking on that). This covers 169 countries, across four dimensions: Extreme Weather, Sea Level Rise, Agricultural Productivity Loss and Overall. In the overall category, China comes out as the most at risk country in the world, followed by India, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Vietnam. That helps explain the upsurge in interest in the issue in China and other G20 emerging countries, where public concern has overtaken that in the developed countries.
Surprisingly, several Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and Libya, emerge as the least at-risk countries, with Egypt the safest of all. I guess this refers to levels of risk before considering the country’s adaptive capacity, otherwise you would expect more developed countries to head the list. i.e. the difference between risk and resilience.
Here’s CGD’s blurb:
“The maps draw upon a comprehensive new dataset described in a new working paper, ‘Quantifying Vulnerability to Climate Change: Implications for Adaptation Assistance’.
The dataset is the first to cover the entire world: 233 countries and other political jurisdictions. The paper presents a methodology for aid donors and others to craft cost-effective assistance for climate adaptation which can be applied consistently to all 233 states and all three problems, or to any subset.
The map displays color-coded rankings for 169 of the 233 states. Small islands, which are very highly vulnerable to sea level rise, and other small jurisdictions cannot be displayed on a map of this resolution but are nonetheless included in the paper and dataset.
The paper presents two sample applications of the data: assistance for 20 small, poor island states to adapt to sea-level rise and general assistance for all low-income countries to adapt to extreme weather changes, sea-level rise, and reduced agricultural productivity.”]]>