Climate Change Vulnerability, Adaptation, and Feedback Hypothesis: A Comparison of Lower-Middle, Upper-Middle, and High-Income Countries

Abstract

Governments and policymakers are increasingly concerned about climate change. To cope with this inevitable issue, the SDGs-13 target underscores the importance of developing adaptation measures that reduce its adverse effects and ultimately safeguard both society and the environment. This issue is critical in developing countries, which are unable to counter climate-related risks because they lack adaptive capacity, suitable infrastructure, technology and, most importantly, human and physical capital. By contrast, resource-endowed developed countries have succeeded in integrating adaptative and protective policies into their developmental agenda using human power, technology, and especially investment. Keeping these facts in mind, this study is framed to examine the nexus between climate change, adaptation measures, and economic development across different income groups (lower-middle, upper-middle, and high income), using the Driscoll–Kraay (D/K) standard errors method for panel data from the period of 1995 to 2020. This study incorporates two indices (i.e., adaptive capacity and adaptation readiness) in the adaptation framework. The results demonstrate that developed countries such as Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA, and the UK are highly adaptive countries due to their readiness for adaptation. Developing countries with very low levels of readiness have a lower adaptive capacity and are, therefore, more vulnerable to climate change. Additionally, a non-causality test demonstrates that a one-way causality runs from readiness, ecological footprint, GDP, renewable energy, FDI, and natural resource investment to the adaptive capacity in all panels. The developed countries are less vulnerable to climate change because of their well-established economies, rich capital resources, good governance, and timely and effective readiness strategies. Adaptation readiness is a vital tool in capacity building for societal adaptation to minimize the effects of disasters on the living standard of communities.

How Can Blue Economy Contribute to Inclusive Growth and Ecosystem Resources in Asia? A Comparative analysis of Economic, Environmental, and Social Indicators Among 19 Asian Cooperation Dialogue Members

“…𝑦 𝑖.𝑡 = 𝑥ʹ 𝑖,𝑡 𝛽 + 𝜀 𝑖,𝑡 𝑖 = 1,2, … … , 𝛮, 𝑡 = 1,2, … … , 𝛵 (6) where y_(i.t) is the dependent variable and x_(i.t) is the independent variable, the initial element of the vector is 1 and the unknown coefficients are displayed with a (K+1) 1 vector., subscripts 𝑖, 𝑡 shows time and countries [127]. Moreover, the term 𝜀 𝑖,𝑡 may have econometric issues like CD and heteroscedasticity in the panel so 𝛽 can be consistently estimated by using OLS regression [128]. The table gives the statistics of 10 indicators for three income groups from W.D.I.…”

Achieving the 2030 Agenda: Mapping the Landscape of Corporate Sustainability Goals and Policies in the European Union

“…Currently, Sweden is recognized as an extensively documented innovator and contributor with a high adaptive capacity to address climate change [115]. The ranking comes as a result of environmental protection regulations and policies that are primarily applied in the manufacturing industry (C), which has the highest contribution to SDG 7.…”

The Effectiveness of Climate Adaptation Finance and Readiness on Vulnerability in African Economies

“…The discrepancy between countries that need adaptation funding and those that are allocated exists [76,77]. The extent to which adaptation finance has reached vulnerable countries through the Green Climate Fund is low, particularly for the least developed countries that are stricken by conflict and have sluggish government institutions [78,79]. To this end, climate justice in adaptation financing has been explored, with inequities attributed to donors' use of aid to foster their political and economic interest in recipient countries [6,80].…”