What Gets Measured Gets Managed? Exploring the Climate Change Performance Index and Climate Risk Index

What is the difference between the Climate Change Performance Index and the newly launched Climate Risk Index? How are they related? And what do they tell us about future climate policy? All these questions will be answered in the blog below.

Climate change mitigation was long considered the top-priority climate change task. However, at least since the Paris Agreement was signed, the three pillars of the climate regime are mitigation, adaptation and addressing loss and damage. The climate crisis is already a reality for millions of people – climate mitigation alone is no longer sufficient for protecting humanity from the serious threats that climate change poses. This is where the Climate Risk Index (CRI) comes into play.

While the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) looks at mitigation efforts of major emitters responsible for a substantial proportion of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the CRI more closely examines the effects of extreme weather events on the different nations. Published annually by Germanwatch since 2008, the CRI analyses fatalities, people affected, and economic losses due to climate-related extreme weather events, such as storms, floods, and heatwaves. In doing so, the CRI builds a ranking of countries.

The CRI, aims to contextualise ongoing climate policy debates, especially in international climate negotiations. After a two-year hiatus because of a temporary lack of data, Germanwatch released the new CRI 2025 this February, with an updated methodology.

The CRI ranks 171 countries; the higher their ranking, the more they are affected.

The Climate Risk Index examines the 30-year period of 1993–2022, and 2022 on its own, using the latest available data.

The CRI’s analysis of the three-decade period of 1993–2022 shows Global South countries are especially affected. Five of the 10 most affected countries are lower middle-income countries (Honduras, Myanmar, India, Vanuatu, and the Philippines), two are upper middle-income (Dominica and China) and three are high-income (Italy, Greece, and Spain).

These results confirm the a great injustice in the climate crisis, as many Global North countries have higher historic emissions, and they continue emitting disproportionately more GHG than their fair carbon budget would allow. Moreover, having profited of emitting for decades, the industrialised countries have greater financial and technical resources. Therefore, they have greater capacity to adapt to extreme weather events’ intensification and addressing losses and damages.

The country ranking results also align with the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report that states: ‘vulnerable communities who have historically contributed least to current climate change are disproportionately affected’.
Looking at the ranking for the year 2022 on its own, the picture changes, as two countries from the lower middle-income group (Pakistan and Nigeria), one upper middle-income (Belize), and seven high-income countries and territories (Italy, Greece, Spain, Puerto Rico, the United States, Portugal, and Bulgaria) are among the 10 most affected countries examined.
In 2022, European countries suffered from extraordinary high effects of extreme weather events. In that year, a stifling heatwave hit Europe. At the time, 2022 was also the hottest year on record for large parts of Europe. The highest temperatures in Western Europe were about 10°C above typical summer highs. Currently, 2024 is considered to be the hottest year on record.

It is important to note that the annual ranking is more of a snapshot in time regarding the importance of the overall degree of affectedness, while the 30-year index provides a more comprehensive picture.

However, this result of the annual index is in line with how Europe is generally the world’s fastest warming continent – warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s. Unusually severe climate events, like in 2022, are therefore expected to become more frequent, and climate adaption will become even more necessary. The index results clearly show that all countries need to improve their climate risk management to be better prepared for extremes and minimize human and economic damage. The most vulnerable countries need to be supported in this effort

Linking extreme weather events and climate change

So, is a single heatwave really influenced by climate change? This is the question attribution science is increasingly able to answer.

A growing body of research shows that human-induced climate change is affecting extreme weather events’ frequency and intensity, and it’s leading to widespread adverse climate impacts. Not only is climate change proven to increase the risk of extreme events, there’s also growing evidence that it contributes to extreme events transforming into ongoing threats. This means countries are increasingly exposed to such events on a recurring basis.

In order to adapt to this high-risk development, countries are required to submit National Adaption Plans (NAPs) to the UNFCCC. The NAPs aim to identify countries’ adaptation needs and provide medium and long-term strategies to address them. However, most countries in the Global South oftentimes lack the human and financial resources to develop them; this is why rich and high emitting countries should provide financial support for these countries. And this must be done transparently, which means not creating further (neo-colonial) dependencies by providing primarily loans instead of grants. In 2022, only 28% of total climate finance was in the form of grants, with the majority being loans. Many Global South countries are already deeply in debt, so this is especially problematic. On top of that, overall climate finance has been insufficient.

Mitigation + Adaptation + Adressing Loss and Damage is the formula for success in the fight against climate crisis

The responsibility for the growing climate crisis lies with human-produced GHG emissions and their impact on global mean temperature changes, which intensify slow- and rapid-onset processes and their associated impacts. Countries are still massively failing to take adequate action to mitigate climate change and, thus, to achieve the Paris Agreement goals.

The latest edition of the CCPI (published by Germanwatch, New Climate Institute, and Climate Action Network International) also reflects this phenomenon. The CCPI assesses the mitigation efforts of 63 countries and the EU, which collectively account for over 90% of global GHG emissions. The CCPI aims to compare countries’ mitigation efforts and progress toward the Paris Agreement, considering renewable energy, energy use, and climate policies, in addition to GHG emissions. The CCPI’s empty top three ranks speak to how no country is doing enough to prevent devastating climate change.

Find more information on the latest CCPI results here.

Against this backdrop, it’s unsurprising that the CRI shows that insufficient mitigation ambition and action are leading to countries being strongly affected, even high-income countries. Stepping up mitigation action is therefore in the interest of high-income and highly emitting countries.

Alongside more ambitious efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C, improving climate risk management,effectively adapting to the impacts of climate change and adequately addressing losses and damages are key to deal with the climate crisis.