Climate policy · data analysis

The world's most at-risk country barely causes the crisis

The Philippines tops the WorldRiskIndex yet emits a tiny share of the world's CO₂. This analysis plots disaster risk against emissions for 182 countries to show the gap between who causes climate change and who suffers from it, and makes the case for climate finance.

Author Billriz CondorCourse Climate Change, Advanced LevelDate December 2024

Explore the data Read the paper (PDF) See the code

Risk vs. responsibility

Each dot is a country. Risk = exposure × vulnerability. Exposure measures natural hazards; vulnerability measures a society's lack of capacity to cope and adapt. Switch the vertical axis to see which one drives each country's risk.

Vertical axis

Highlight a country

The horizontal axis is logarithmic. The vertical line marks 1% of global emissions (major emitters); the horizontal line marks the median score. Together they split countries into the paper's four groups.

Four groups of countries

Split at the median risk score and at 1% of global fossil CO₂, which separates the 15 major emitters from everyone else. Notably, 14 of those 15 major emitters are also high-risk.

The 10 most at-risk countries

WorldRiskIndex 2024 and share of global fossil CO₂ (2023)

COP29 climate finance: asked vs. pledged

New annual climate-finance goal, US$ billions per year (Baku, 2024)

Vulnerable nations asked for US$500 billion a year. Historically high-emitting countries pledged US$300 billion.

Why the Philippines?

7,000+ islands108 million people, most living along coastlines exposed to sea-level rise

Typhoon Haiyan, 2013the strongest typhoon recorded at the time, with a storm surge that cut water and power for months

Ring of Fire + typhoon beltexposed to earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones and flooding at once

People's Survival Funda national fund for local adaptation, alongside international climate finance (e.g. ADB's US$10B programme)

Key findings

Low emitters carry the most riskThe Philippines ranks first in risk but emits only about 0.4% of global fossil CO₂.

Wealth buys resilienceChina is the most exposed country in the index but ranks low for vulnerability, because its capacity to cope and adapt cuts its overall risk.

Vulnerability without exposureThe Central African Republic, Sudan and Chad are among the most vulnerable countries yet have little hazard exposure and negligible emissions.

Finance falls shortCOP29's US$300B pledge is well below the US$500B vulnerable nations asked for. How quickly funds can be accessed matters as warming overshoots 1.5 °C.

How it's calculated

This Python script downloads the WorldRiskIndex and EDGAR datasets, joins them by ISO3 code, calculates each country's share of global fossil CO₂ and emissions per person, and assigns the four groups.

analysis/build_dataset.pyOpen on GitHub →

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