Venezuela And Haiti, The Countries Most Vulnerable To Climate Change And With The Fewest Resources To Adapt

Latin America and the Caribbean ranks second after Africa as the region of the world most vulnerable to climate change. This is true not only if factors such as its geographic location and topography are taken into account, but also if other determining factors are added, such as its financial capacity and its governance. “Many of the countries most threatened by climate change are also deeply in debt,” writes Amy Campbell, a student at Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, in a blog post. This center, along with the Center on Global Energy Policy at the same university, and with support from the the Rockefeller Foundation, has created for the first time an index of 188 countries that combines the three variables. Because they are in debt, Campbell continues, “credit rating agencies repeatedly downgrade their ratings, which increases their cost of capital and puts adaptation beyond their reach.”

In the case of the countries in the Latin America and Caribbean region, eight have entered what experts call the “high-risk zone,” being among the 30% most vulnerable. Venezuela and Haiti lead the way, followed by Belize, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Bolivia. In total, they represent a combined population of approximately 105 million people.

To compile the index, the team considered climate inputs from the Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Center (DRMKC), financial insecurity variables from the World Bank, and governance indicators from the World Bank and the Fund for Peace. They aggregated these in a series of layers, generating four “sub-indexes”: a pessimistic one—what will happen if drastic and immediate action is not taken—and an optimistic one. Each of these was also projected as a scenario in 2050 and 2080. The goal that countries set through the Paris Agreement is to prevent the temperature increase from rising more than 2°C by 2100 compared to pre-industrial levels, and to make every effort to keep it below 1.5°C.

“The goal of this index,” recalls Lyana Latorre, vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, “is to better diagnose and determine where to finance solutions to the climate crisis more efficiently, not only with better returns but also with greater impact.”

The report by Columbia highlights that Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras appear repeatedly as vulnerable countries in all four scenarios, and that only 13 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean have a low to medium risk in the optimistic 2050 scenario: Guyana, being the 22nd country with the best score, above Chile (51), Mexico (60) and Panama (64). Other South American countries, such as Brazil (88), Colombia (100) and Argentina (117), are closer to the medium risk zone in the global ranking under this enthusiastic medium-term scenario.

If you zoom in on the data for countries like Venezuela and Haiti versus Chile—a country ranked higher on the index—it becomes clearer why the first two have such high vulnerability. It’s not just that they have coastlines exposed to coastal erosion and sea level rise, but they are also countries that are overburdened with debt or lack access to financial markets. While Venezuela and Haiti’s overall financial vulnerability score is 100 and 78, respectively, Chile’s is a mere 41. If you focus solely on climate risk assessment, however, Venezuela receives a score of 67, Haiti 70, and Chile 36.

As Campbell writes, access to resources is critical. “Countries may not be the poorest in terms of GDP, but if they can’t access the capital needed for adaptation, they remain trapped in cycles of disaster and recovery.” And, in Latorre’s words, the index, which was presented during the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development currently being held in Seville, Spain also questions how the current financial system works, falling short of the challenges of an environmental crisis. “There is a market saturated with the credit mechanism that is pushing countries to the limit,” she adds. “[Climate] financing should be based primarily on grants.”

More than an idea, it’s a movement that’s resonating in low- and middle-income countries, especially small islands and island states. Despite not having emitted even 1% of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, they still bear the brunt of its impacts: more intense hurricanes, rising sea levels, and extreme droughts. Recovering from this is not easy when they are in debt. And if there’s no money to get back on their feet, they’ll have even less money to adapt to what’s coming.

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