Exploring climate preparedness in low- and middle-income countries

The impacts of climate change are already happening, and will likely get worse. Thus, climate preparedness — the ability of governments, communities, and individuals to anticipate and increase resilience to climate impacts — will be key to protecting people from harm. This is particularly true in low- and middle-income nations in parts of Europe and the Global South. Because of their geographic locations and lower incomes, these countries often face greater harm from the impacts of climate change, despite being the least responsible for the carbon emissions that cause them.

In these regions, climate preparedness has emerged as a key issue. The more prepared and resilient a country or community is, the less likely it is to experience lasting harm when climate impacts strike. Preparedness can take many forms, including implementing national policies such as emergency alert systems and disaster relief funds, building and maintaining physical infrastructure such as flood levees, fostering community support networks, and encouraging individual capacity.

In this analysis, we explore the relationship between institutional climate change preparedness (i.e., economic, government, and social preparedness) and individuals’ perceptions of their own preparedness across 68 low- and middle-income countries and territories in Southeastern Europe and the Global South. Specifically, we examine the relationship between indicators of a country’s preparedness from the University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative’s ND-GAIN Readiness Score and individuals’ self-reported preparedness for extreme weather events from our international survey conducted in partnership with Meta and with Rare’s Center for Behavior and the Environment.

ND-GAIN assigns Readiness scores to 192 countries worldwide each year on 0-1 scale, with higher scores indicating greater levels of institutional preparedness.1 Countries are also ranked by their ND-GAIN score, with 1 being the highest ranking (highest Readiness score) and 192 being the lowest ranking (lowest Readiness score).

Our international survey asked, “How prepared are you and anyone else in your household for any extreme weather events you might experience?” We report the percentage of people in each country who say they are “very prepared” or “somewhat prepared” for extreme weather.