Adaptation and Health: Are Countries with More Climate-Sensitive Health Sectors More Likely to Receive Adaptation Aid?

Abstract

Climate change poses a severe challenge for many developing countries, and the need to adapt has been widely recognized. Public health is one of the sectors where adaptation is necessary, as a warming climate likely affects general health conditions, the spread of various diseases, etc. Some countries are more affected by such climatic challenges, as their climate sensitivity—both to health-related issues and to climate change in general—is higher. This study examines whether more climate-sensitive countries are more likely to receive support from donors through the relatively new channel of adaptation aid, with a particular focus on the health sector. To investigate this relationship, this study proposes and operationalizes a new indicator to capture climate sensitivity of countries’ health sectors. The results, however, indicate that climate sensitivity does not matter for adaptation aid allocation. Instead, adaptation aid to a large degree follows development aid. In light of the promises repeatedly made by donors in the climate negotiations that adaptation aid should go to the most vulnerable, developing countries should push for a different allocation mechanism of adaptation aid in future negotiation rounds.

Development and Climate Aid to Africa: Comparing Aid Allocation Models for Different Aid Flows

“…In the case of adaptation aid, we consider only physical exposure, while adaptive capacity is included in the general measure of GDP per capita used to operationalise recipient needs. Future research could develop finer measures to capture vulnerability, and particularly also a measure for (sector-specific) climate sensitivity (see Weiler, 2019). Also in the case of measuring additionality for mitigation aid, future research should follow Bagchi et al (2016) and use more fine-grained measures.…”

“…Vulnerability to climate change (additionality adaptation): While there are various ways to capture vulnerability to climate change, the approach which has gained wide recognition conceptualises vulnerability as having three dimensions: physical exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity (Adger, 2006; Muccione et al, 2017; Smit and Wandel, 2006). While the latter is already captured using GDP per capita, a system’s sensitivity is very sector dependent (Weiler, 2019). Thus, we include a measure of physical exposure to capture countries’ vulnerability to climate change impacts.…”

“…While vulnerability is a contested concept (Adger, 2006), it is most commonly subdivided into exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity (Muccione et al, 2017; ND-GAIN, 2013). However, adaptive capacity can largely be seen as a matter of resource availability and thus overlaps strongly with the recipient need model of conventional development aid (Betzold and Weiler, 2018), and sensitivity is, to a large degree, sector-specific (Weiler, 2019). Thus, for the purpose of this article, we define additionality in the area of adaptation aid as that part of aid flows that are provided because countries are physically exposed to climate impacts, that is, “the physical factors external to the system that contribute to vulnerability” (ND-GAIN, n.d.) or the “degree to which a system experiences environmental stress” (Adger, 2006: 270).…”