Climate vulnerability, development aid, and economic resilience in the Global South

Abstract

This paper examines the role that development assistance can play in ensuring that climate-sensitive countries in the Global South are able to establish favorable economic resilience. It tries to determine the correspondence of aid delivery to the vulnerability indicators and to analyze its efficacy in improving adaptive and institutional abilities in the face of climatic perceptions. The study presupposes a mixed approach and direction, where the cross-national analysis of quantitative data on climate exposure, aid disbursement, and economic performance (19952025) will be performed with qualitative case studies of the selected areas in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. The approaches are regression models and structural equation modeling which helps in determination of causal relationships between aid and resilience outcomes and thematic analysis of policy documents and interviews offer thematic context. Results may hint at the fact that although climate-oriented aid has a positive correlation with short-term recovery and institutional empowerment, the use of climate-oriented aid has a quite different effect on the long-term economic resilience, as it is significantly influenced by the quality of governance, domestic capabilities, and coordination of aid.