Does Climate Change Vulnerability Matter for the Allocation of Adaptation Finance? An Empirical Analysis of Donors and Instruments over the Period 2019–2023

Climate change adaptation is a central challenge for sustainable development, particularly for the most exposed countries. While international agreements emphasize prioritizing vulnerable countries, how this principle translates into the actual allocation of adaptation finance remains uncertain.
This paper examines the extent to which structural vulnerability to climate change is taken into account by donors in allocating public adaptation finance over the period 2019–2023, using a harmonized database covering bilateral and multilateral public commitments.
The results show that structural vulnerability does not appear to be a significant determinant of per capita adaptation commitments, except at the most extreme levels. By contrast, income per capita and, above all, the quality of governance emerge as major explanatory factors. Donors thus tend to allocate more resources to countries with limited fiscal space, while conditioning these allocations on the presence of sufficient institutional capacity, combining poverty targeting with institutional selectivity based on implementation capacity. A differentiated analysis reveals that grants are the most responsive to structural climate vulnerability, whereas concessional and non-concessional loans primarily respond to criteria related to income, creditworthiness, and governance.