When choosing a climate-resilient country, consider both the country’s readiness and vulnerability to climate change – the ND-GAIN provides a good measure of this. The other two key factors to consider are a country’s climate performance and its geographical location.
A country’s climate performance is important because it measures the willingness of that country to recognise, adapt to, and mitigate climate change. These factors are vital to a country’s overall climate resilience because, without a coherent stance or strategy on the climate crisis, a country will struggle to deal with it.
The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) measures the climate protection performance of the 60 countries responsible for over 92 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. The highest ranking countries on the CCPI are Denmark, Sweden, Chile, Morocco, India, Estonia, Norway, the UK, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Portugal, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, and Malta.
Geographic location contributes to picking a climate-resilient country, too. Research has demonstrated that the prospects of a country’s economy and agriculture are strongly linked it its proximity to the Equator – with the general rule of thumb being that the further away a country is from the Equator, the brighter its climate future looks.