The Financing Climate Adaptation Index (FCAI) is designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of climate vulnerability for nation states in order to improve the targeting and provision of climate change adaptation financing. The FCAI takes a data-informed approach, presenting both a high-level and detailed representation of a country’s climate and financial vulnerability. In addition to climate and financial vulnerability, this dashboard also provides an overview of governance considerations that may impact lending modalities or conditions. It is acknowledged that more evidence is needed to direct adaptation finance to the most climate-vulnerable countries. This index helps to further the understanding of climate vulnerability by highlighting the compounding effects of high climate risk and low access to capital while demarcating very high risk to help guide climate adaptation funding to those most in need, as well as to inform more effective adaptation and financing strategies.
The FCAI aims to highlight climate vulnerability as a function of both climate risk and access to financing. In particular, by adding a financial vulnerability component, it intends to heighten the climate vulnerability of countries that may otherwise ‘slip through the cracks’ due to a higher income threshold and perceived ability to adapt (e.g., such as those countries that are wealthier but face a high debt burden). The FCAI, therefore, provides a tool for climate finance, aimed at closing the gap between risk assessment and funding allocations.
The Financing Climate Adaptation Index can be found at https://financeadaptationindex.org or by clicking the link below.
The FCAI is intended to support decision-making for concessional finance and directing investments in climate adaptation and hazard mitigation. The Index, by identifying countries that are both vulnerable to climate risk and lack access to finance to mitigate these risks, aims to help identify the countries to target for grants and concessional loans or other similar financial mechanisms (e.g., guarantees).
Potential users of this climate vulnerability index are global and regional financial institutions and foreign aid agencies that allocate climate adaptation funding. Additionally, organizations responsible for overseeing global climate agreements, such as the UNFCCC’s Adaptation Committee, can integrate this index into their frameworks for monitoring adaptation finance and informing indicators like the Global Goal on Adaptation.
Another key user group for this Index is policymakers, government agencies, and nongovernmental organizations in climate-vulnerable regions. These stakeholders can use the index to identify priority areas for adaptation investments, strengthen their applications for international climate financing, and guide local and national planning for disaster risk reduction. Similarly, organizations can reference the FCAI to ensure equitable allocation of adaptation funds, monitor progress toward multidimensional resilience goals, and advocate for increased support for vulnerable communities.
The FCAI builds on previous work by integrating multiple composite indices to provide a comprehensive, multidimensional assessment of climate vulnerability within the global concessional climate financing architecture. Unlike traditional risk or vulnerability assessments, it incorporates financial indicators to help policymakers and financial institutions direct funding where it is most needed, ensuring that climate-vulnerable countries have better access to concessional finance. It also provides a Supplementary Governance Index to help further assess governance vulnerabilities that can both exacerbate climate risk and impact decisions on the most appropriate funding mechanism. By directly linking vulnerability assessments with financial accessibility, the FCAI fills a critical gap in guiding climate finance toward enhancing resilience in the most affected regions.
This project was completed in collaboration with the National Center for Disaster Preparedness and the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy. The FCAI project team gratefully acknowledges the Joint Research Center of the European Commission, whose consultation during the development of our index methodology significantly deepened our understanding of the INFORM Risk and INFORM Climate Change indices. These insights informed the evolution of the FCAI, with the INFORM indices ultimately serving as a key pillar. We also extend our sincere thanks to the climate finance specialists whose feedback and perspectives helped shape the final framing of the FCAI.
Financial support for the project was provided by The Rockefeller Foundation.
The Financing Climate Adaptation Index (FCAI) project team was led by:
Contribution support from:
For more information, please contact us at ncdp@columbia.edu.
