Conference Agenda

As countries and populations become increasingly vulnerable to rising climate risks and catastrophes, building adaptive capacity and resilience is essential to sustaining long-run welfare. Climate-related hazards, such as floods, droughts, cyclones and heat waves, threaten progress on socio-economic development in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). This paper assesses and compares whether LMICs are making progress towards key social and economic development goals while at the same time building sufficient capacity for climate change adaptation and resilience. By developing and employing a compensating surplus welfare framework, we estimate the net per capita welfare gains (in dollars) for 108 LMICs from 2000 to 2024 associated with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1-7 and with a country’s economic, social and governance “readiness” to adapt to climate change. We also examine the rate of convergence of welfare among LMICs over this period. The results show that deteriorating climate readiness impacted significantly the net overall per capita welfare of developing countries over 2000-24. Poorer LMICs generally experienced declining readiness, which not only affected their welfare but also slowed their rate of convergence toward the per capita welfare levels of richer LMICs. Our analysis helps identify effective and efficient ways to channel adaptation funding to boost the climate readiness and economic development of LMICs, making an important contribution to policies on climate change adaptation and resilience.