Ecological Indicators 117 (2020) 106529

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Ecological Indicators
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolind

A new composite climate change vulnerability index T

⁎
H.K. Edmonds, J.E. Lovell, C.A.K. Lovell
School of Economics, University of Queensland, Brisbane QLD 4072, Australia

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The earth’s climate is changing, with global warming attributable to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions
Climate change driven by economic and population growth. Human systems and ecosystems vary in their exposure, mitigation
Vulnerability and adaptive capacity, and vulnerability to various forms of climate change. Once mitigation and adaptation
Composite index efforts have been exhausted, vulnerability remains. Data compiled by the University of Notre Dame covering
Endogenous aggregation weights
over 100 nations in 2016 were used to construct a new composite climate change vulnerability index that
Data envelopment analysis
features endogenously generated weights to aggregate vulnerability indices across six vulnerable sectors. These
weights have the potential to inform policy aimed at allocating resources to reduce the cost of limiting vul-
nerability. The new composite vulnerability index, whose weights differ across sectors and across nations, is
compared with the Notre Dame vulnerability index, which uses weights equal across sectors and constant across
nations. Although the two indices agree on the identity of the most vulnerable nations, there is a statistically
significant difference between the two indices. In addition, a nonparametric statistical test failed to reject the
null hypothesis that one sectoral index could be deleted from the composite index without significant loss of
information. This also has potentially important policy implications.

1. Introduction
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions driven by economic and
population growth are warming planet Earth and changing its climate.
A succession of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Assessment Reports concluded that warming is “unequivocal”, and it is
“extremely likely” that human influence has been the dominant cause of
the observed warming since the mid-20th century. Climate change
brings shrinking glaciers, rising sea levels, and increases in the fre-
quency of heat waves, warm temperature extremes, and heavy pre-
cipitation events, all of which adversely affect both natural and human
systems. Continued growth in greenhouse gas emissions is predicted to
cause further global warming and climate change, increasing the like-
lihood of severe and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.
Human systems and ecosystems differ in their exposure, mitigation
and adaptive capacity, and vulnerability to various forms of climate
change. Some systems are exposed to droughts, others to cyclones, and
still others to rising sea levels. Once mitigation and adaptation efforts
have been exhausted, vulnerability remains. In its Third Assessment
Report the IPCC (2001; 6) defined vulnerability as “…the degree to
which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects
of climate change, including climate variability and extremes.” In
general, nations with the least resources are the most vulnerable.
IPCC (2001; 5,8,16) noted that nations exhibit different vulner-
ability to climate change depending on geographic location, and social,
economic and environmental conditions. For example, small island
states and nations with low-lying coastal areas are particularly vul-
nerable to rising sea levels, a vulnerability not shared by high-altitude
inland nations. Later IPCC (2014a; 6) wrote, with very high confidence,
that differences in vulnerability arise from both climatic and non-cli-
matic factors, the latter encompassing multidimensional inequalities
often produced by uneven development processes. Especially vulner-
able are socially, economically, culturally, politically, institutionally or
otherwise marginalized groups. More recently IPCC (2018; 9) added,
with high confidence, communities dependent on agricultural or coastal
livelihoods. In the academic literature, Yohe et al. (2006) have con-
structed a vulnerability index using a methodology of Brenkert and
Malone (2005), and have emphasized the uneven global distribution of
vulnerability. Schleussner et al. (2018) relied on the Multidimensional
Poverty Index (MPI) of Alkire et al. (2016) to identify key vulnerability
areas with their “1.5℃ Hotspots”. Both studies associated high vul-
nerability regions with Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Small
Island Developing States (SIDS).
Vulnerability is an important determinant of the allocation of the
Least Developed Country Fund resources under the auspices of the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: k.lovell@uq.edu.au (C.A.K. Lovell).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.106529
Received 21 November 2019; Received in revised form 5 April 2020; Accepted 12 May 2020
Available online 22 May 2020
1470-160X/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
H.K. Edmonds, et al.
(2019) and financed through the Global Environment Facility. The
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs and
Committee for Development Policy (2018) currently contains 47 na-
tions in its Least Developed Country (LDC) category, which aggregates
an Economic Vulnerability Index (EcoVI), a Human Assets Index, and
Gross National Income per capita; Guillaumont (2009) provides details
on its construction. While the EcoVI differs from the IPCC concept of
vulnerability to climate change, it shares crucial components (e.g., the
percent of population in coastal zones of low elevation).
Numerous factors constrain adaptation, and therefore vulnerability.
The key constraints identified by IPCC (2001; 8 and IPCC (2014a;
26,27) include limited financial and human resources, limited in-
tegration or coordination of governance, absence of key adaptation
leaders and advocates, and poor planning. IPCC (2014b) augmented
this list of constraints to adaptation and provided a detailed survey of
the literature.
The existence of adaptation constraints leads naturally to the con-
cept of adaptation thresholds, and hard and soft limits to adaptation,
and then to adaptation deficits, or adaptation gaps, the difference be-
tween (or ratio of) actual and maximum feasible adaptation attributable
to constraints and inefficiency, as discussed by United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) (UNEP, 2014, UNEP, 2016, UNEP,
2017, UNEP, 2018). UNEP (2018; 2) defined adaptation gaps as “…the
difference between the actual level of adaptation and the level required
to achieve a societal goal”. Maximum feasible adaptation can be re-
presented by an adaptation frontier introduced by Preston et al. (2013).
Sectors generally identified with food security, water resources,
human health, ecosystem services, human habitat, and infrastructure
inclusive of energy resources experience differences in vulnerability.
Data from the University of Notre Dame containing vulnerability in-
dices across these six sectors for over 100 nations were used to con-
struct a composite climate change vulnerability index (CCVI) for each
nation, and to contrast it with the Notre Dame vulnerability index. The
CCVI was constructed in a data envelopment analysis (DEA), a linear
programming technique introduced by Charnes et al. (1978) to analyze
the performance of not-for-profit entities. DEA is a particularly appro-
priate methodology for analyzing environmental outcomes that are not
priced on markets. In the present analysis decision-making units are
nations, variables are the six sectoral vulnerability indices, and the
relative performance of nations is measured with the CCVI.
DEA also provides a flexible, endogenously-generated weighting
system to aggregate environmental outcomes and to guide decision-
making and resource allocation aimed at enhancing the efficacy of
policies designed to reduce vulnerability to climate change. DEA-gen-
erated endogenous weights can play a critical role in addition to their
role as aggregators. Mendelsohn (2006) and Anderson et al. (2019)
have stressed that market prices would provide signals eliciting public
policy responses that differ across nations. These price signals would
encourage efficient adaptation, thereby lowering the overall cost of
limiting vulnerability to climate change. In the absence of market prices
of sectoral vulnerability indices, DEA weights can serve the same pur-
pose, by providing proxies for market prices that can elicit nation-
specific policy responses that direct resource allocation to reduce the
cost of limiting vulnerability to climate change. IPCC (2014a; 26)
identified these signals with economic instruments such as payments
for environmental services, improved resource pricing, and charges and
subsidies. The ability to quantify unpriced effects addresses the call of
Weaver and Miller (2019) for cross-disciplinary participation that
would bring improvements in our ability to value impacts of climate
change as an input to the design of policy mechanisms.
Generalizing from adaptation to vulnerability, the CCVI introduces
vulnerability gaps relative to a vulnerability frontier, and is capable of
identifying the most vulnerable nations. Observed variation in vulner-
ability gaps across sectors within nations makes it important to treat
nations differently when constructing a composite vulnerability index.
This is particularly important given the link between vulnerability and
2
Ecological Indicators 117 (2020) 106529
the allocation of international support to less developed nations.
The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. In Section 2
composite indices and their structure, with emphasis on the literature
concerned with the construction of composite environmental indices,
are summarized. A description of the specific Notre Dame data used in
the analysis is also included. In Section 3 the methodology adopted to
construct the composite CCVI is outlined. In Section 4 empirical find-
ings are presented and discussed with suggestions for further research.
One finding highlights the superiority of an endogenously-weighted
composite CCVI over a conventional fixed weight index, and another
demonstrates the feasibility of exploiting the endogenously-generated
weights to construct an equally informative CCVI having fewer sub-
indices.
2. Literature review
The IPCC’s definition of vulnerability has evolved little through
successive Assessment Reports, and has guided the subsequent aca-
demic literature. Adger (2006), Eakin and Luers (2006), and Gallopín
(2006) have developed a holistic social-ecological system framework
for addressing the human and environmental sources of vulnerability
and establishing suitable metrics for it. Beroya-Eitner (2016) summar-
ized the issues with a focus on the relatively neglected ecological di-
mension, and Weißhuhn et al. (2018) provided a recent survey of the
literature. The University of Notre Dame (2015a, 2015b) vulnerability
index fits into this holistic framework, containing both social and
ecological components within its sectoral indices.
The transition from conceptualization to quantification has gener-
ated a search for ways to aggregate multiple vulnerability indices into a
composite index. The OECD (nd) provided guidance, defining a com-
posite index as a single index comprised of multiple indicators based on
“…an underlying model of the multi-dimensional concept that is being
measured.” Key features of the underlying model include the mathe-
matical structure of the composite index and its appropriateness, re-
gardless of structure, as a basis for policy-making.
The encyclopedic OECD Handbook edited by Nardo et al. (2008)
stressed the importance of the underlying theoretical framework for
generating a “meaningful” composite index. It also notes that weighting
and aggregation of component indices should be consistent with the
underlying theoretical framework, a desideratum satisfied by few com-
posite indices, and fewer composite environmental indices.
The list of extant composite indices is long; Böhringer and Jochem
(2007) surveyed 11 composite indices, including the Human Develop-
ment Index (HDI) (United Nations Development Programme, nd), and
found each to have structural shortcomings. The HDI is the most pro-
minent composite index, and has received the most criticism; see for
example, Despotis (2005), Cherchye et al. (2008), and Klugman et al.
(2011). Much of the criticism has revolved around the mathematical
structure of the model underlying the composite index. The mathema-
tical structure of a composite index can be characterized in terms of
normalization of variables, weighting of variables in aggregation, and
the functional form of the aggregator function (Gan et al., 2017; Greco
et al., 2019). It is widely recognized that most composite environmental
indices have restrictive mathematical structures. The EcoVI provides a
prominent example; for a detailed account of its construction illus-
trating its restrictive structure see Feinduono and Goujon (2016). An-
other is provided by the Physical Vulnerability to Climate Change Index
(PVCCI) (Guillaumont, 2015; Closset et al., 2017; Feindouno and
Guillaumont, 2019; Guillaumont and Simonet, 2011a, 2011b). A third
is the Yale Environmental Performance Index (EPI) (Wendling et al.,
2018). A fourth is the Environmental Vulnerability Index (EnvVI) of the
South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission and the United Nations
Environmental Programme (South Pacific Applied Geoscience
Commission and United Nations Environmental Programme, 2005).
Eakin and Luers (2006), Eriksen and Kelly (2007), Barnett et al.
(2008), Füssel (2009) and Hinkel (2011) have offered a variety of
H.K. Edmonds, et al.
somewhat skeptical assessments of the mathematical structure, and
hence the practical value, of these and other composite environmental
indices. Barnett et al. (2008; 102) even argued that indices such as
EnvVI “should not be used as the basis for disbursing funds, comparing
countries, or for measuring the performance of countries in environ-
mental management”.
The Notre Dame vulnerability index is structured similarly to the
composite environmental indices mentioned above, being calculated as
the arithmetic mean of its six normalized sectoral vulnerability indices.
This has two implications: (i) sectoral weights are equal to 1/6, forcing
all nations to value the six sectors equally, regardless of their circum-
stances; and (ii) aggregation is linear (rather than log-linear, for ex-
ample), implying perfect substitutability among all sectoral indices for
all nations. This form of weighting and aggregation is common among
composite indices, and it has generated much criticism in the literature,
including Cherchye et al. (2007, Cherchye et al., 2008), Bowen and
Moesen (2011), Zhou et al. (2006, 2007, 2017), Gan et al. (2017), Seth
and McGillivray (Seth and McGillivary, 2018), Zhou and Zhang (2018),
and Greco et al. (2019).
Surprisingly few attempts have been made to introduce flexibility
into the mathematical structure of composite environmental indices.
One such attempt, by Brooks et al. (2005), used statistical methods to
identify key indicators and to introduce a degree of flexibility into their
relative importance in constructing an aggregate vulnerability index for
ranking nations. The CCVI constructed in the present analysis in-
troduces flexibility by adopting a mathematical programming approach
proposed by Melyn and Moesen (1991), and extended by Cherchye
et al. (2007), that generates a “benefit-of-the-doubt” composite index
whose aggregation weights are endogenously generated, and thus free
to differ across sectors and nations, thereby respecting their varying
circumstances. Recent applications of endogenous weight aggregation
in an environmental context include Zhou, Delmas and Kohli (2017),
and Edmonds et al. (2017). The set of sectoral indices to be aggregated
are identified by adopting a nonparametric statistical approach devel-
oped by Pastor et al. (2002) that identifies superfluous sectoral indices
that may be discarded.
3. Methodology and data
The use of DEA and its variants has spread to the construction of a
host of composite indices, most notably alternatives to the HDI
(Despotis, 2005; Cherchye et al., 2008) and recently to the construction
of a variety of composite environmental indices, at micro (Zhou et al.,
2006; Bellenger and Herlihy, 2009; Edmonds et al., 2015; Zhou et al.,
2017; Liu et al., 2019) and macro (Färe et al., 2004; Zhou et al., 2007;
Lo, 2010; Edmonds et al., 2017; Huang et al., 2018) levels. The CCVI
was also constructed using a variant of DEA.
Let nations be indexed by i = 1,…,I, and let a nation’s vulnerability
be tracked across N sectors with sectoral vulnerability indices labelled
xn and indexed by n = 1,…,N. The DEA program that evaluates the
aggregate vulnerability to climate change of nation “o” is given by the
dual pair of linear programs in Table 1.
The envelopment and multiplier programs contain sectoral vulner-
ability indices xn but no additional variables that might influence vul-
nerability such as geographic location, national income or form of
Table 1
DEA CCVI programs.
Envelopment Program Multiplier Program
minθ,λ θ maxμ,ν μ
subject to subject to
I
θxno - ∑i = 1 λi xni ≥ 0 n = 1,…,N
N
∑n = 1 νn xno = 1
λi ≥ 0 i = 1,…,I N dices, and to compare the resulting CCVI(N) ranking with another CCVI
μ − ∑n = 1 νn xni ≤ 0 i = 1,…,I
μ,νn ≧ 0 n = 1,…,N
Calculating CCVI
3
Ecological Indicators 117 (2020) 106529
governance. This abbreviation of a conventional DEA program is the
contribution of Adolphson et al. (1991) and Lovell and Pastor (1999).
Unlike most models of business or economic behavior that contain
variables to be minimized, such as expenses or resource use, and vari-
ables to be maximized, such as revenues or educational outcomes, this
climate change vulnerability model is restricted to variables to be
minimized, namely sectoral vulnerability indices. The envelopment
program in Table 1 calculates the potential of nation “o” to shrink its
vector of sectoral vulnerability indices xo as much as possible, subject to
N constraints, one for each sectoral index, that bound the shrunken
vector xo below by a nonnegative convex combination of the least
vulnerable nations in the sample. The optimal value of θ ∈ (0,1], with
smaller values of θ indicating greater vulnerability. This lower bound
defines a composite vulnerability frontier, analogous to the adaptation
frontier introduced by Preston et al. (2013). The optimal value of θ
forms the basis for a measure of a nation’s composite vulnerability gap,
the difference between (or ratio of) its actual vulnerability xo and its
potential vulnerability θ xo. The series of adaptation gaps examined by
UNEP can be viewed as conceptual components of a vulnerability gap.
The reciprocal θ -1 ∈ [1, +∞) is the composite climate change vul-
nerability index CCVI, with larger values of θ -1 indicating higher levels of
vulnerability. θ -1 provides a ranking of nations on the basis of their
overall vulnerability to climate change, independently of any other
national characteristics, which are ignored in the present analysis.
The multiplier program in Table 1 calculates for nation “o” a vector
of endogenous weights νn ∈ (0,+∞) with which to aggregate its sec-
toral vulnerability indices into its CCVI. For a nation with excessive
amounts of sectoral vulnerability index xn the program will implicitly
attach a small weight to this sectoral index in an effort to minimize its
overall vulnerability score. A very small weight for a specific sector
suggests that the marginal improvements from mitigation efforts in that
sector are likely to be infinitesimal. By reflecting different vulnerability
across sectors that in turn reflect different national circumstances, these
weights have the potential to assist in resource allocation and the de-
sign of policies intended to reduce vulnerability, as noted in Section 1
with reference to Mendelsohn (2006), Anderson et al. (2019), and
Weaver and Miller (2019). The IPCC refers to these policies as adap-
tation and mitigation pathways.
By the duality theorem of linear programming, at optimum θ = μ,
and can therefore be expressed as an endogenously-weighted sum of its
N
sectoral vulnerability indices, θ = ∑n = 1 νn xni for any nation i = 1,…,o,
…,I. These endogenous weights provide a considerable improvement
over the fixed weights used in most composite indices. Fixed weights
impose perfect substitutability among sectoral indices, with rates of
substitution constant across nations. The endogenous weights gener-
ated by DEA also impose perfect substitutability among sectoral indices,
but with the important advantage that weights, and rates of substitution
among sectoral indices, are allowed to differ across nations according to
a nation’s circumstances. Weight flexibility is particularly important in
the construction of composite vulnerability indices, since nations differ
in their exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity across sectors.
As an auxiliary benefit of generating endogenous weights of sectoral
vulnerability indices, DEA provides a methodology for implementing
Occam’s Razor, which states that when faced with competing models
that make the same predictions, one should select the model with the
fewest assumptions. In the context of this study DEA provides a fra-
mework within which to conduct a statistical test of the hypothesis that
a candidate sectoral vulnerability index xn is superfluous in the con-
struction of a CCVI, and can be deleted from the initial list of N sectoral
indices, because deleting it has an insignificant impact on the overall
CCVI used to rank nations.
The procedure is to run DEA using all N sectoral vulnerability in-
(N-1) ranking obtained by deleting a candidate sectoral vulnerability
index. The candidate sectoral vulnerability index is that index having
H.K. Edmonds, et al. Ecological Indicators 117 (2020) 106529

the fewest positive weights, and the smallest average weight, among the Table 2
N indices in CCVI(N). If the CCVI(N-1) ranking is sufficiently similar to Summary statistics for sector vulnerability indicators.
the CCVI(N) ranking, the candidate index is deemed superfluous and Ecosystem Food Human Health Infrastructure Water
deleted. Somewhat more formally, if a sufficiently large number of Services Habitat
nations experiences a sufficiently small reduction in their CCVI when a
Mean 0.4451 0.5266 0.4673 0.4176 0.3478 0.3258
candidate sectoral vulnerability index is deleted, that index is deemed
Std dev 0.0885 0.1377 0.1114 0.1698 0.1081 0.0938
superfluous and removed. The test is a nonparametric statistical test Max 0.6588 0.8015 0.7454 0.8104 0.7688 0.6921
based on the distribution of the ratio γ = CCVI(N-1)/CCVI(N) ≦ 1. Min 0.2251 0.2027 0.2213 0.1778 0.0845 0.0424
− −
From γ calculate Tn = {1 if γn < γ and 0 otherwise}, where γ is the
largest acceptable reduction in CCVI. Finally define the test statistic
N
T = ∑n = 1 Tn , which counts the number of nations whose CCVI declines vulnerability is particularly severe in the Infrastructure and Water
− −
by more than γ . Under the null hypothesis that γ ≦ γ this statistic is sectors. This dispersion highlights the need for a weighting and ag-
distributed as binomial (N,po), with 0 < po < 1 a probability level. gregation methodology that respects and incorporates nations’ differing
Pastor et al. (2002) provide details of the statistical test of similarity. distributions of vulnerability to climate change.
Summarizing, the methodology used in this analysis makes three The analysis of these data proceeded as follows: (i) a composite
contributions to the construction of a composite vulnerability index: (i) climate change vulnerability index CCVI(6) was created with the DEA
the ability to generate endogenous weights with which to aggregate program in Table 1 to aggregate six sectoral vulnerability indices; (ii)
sectoral indices; (ii) the ability of these weights to guide policy intended after testing the null hypothesis that a sector is redundant and can be
to lower the cost of reducing vulnerability in an efficient, i.e., resource- deleted from CCVI(6) without statistically significant loss of informa-
saving, manner; and (iii) the ability to identify superfluous sectoral tion, one sector was deemed redundant, and deleted; and (iii) DEA was
indices. again used to aggregate vulnerability indices across five key sectors to
National vulnerability data are available from The University of create another composite climate change vulnerability index CCVI(5).
Notre Dame (2015a). The data are normalized on [0,1], with higher
values indicating greater vulnerability, and arranged in matrix format, 4. Results and discussion
with three components (exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity) that
influence vulnerability, and six sectors (ecosystem services, food, human The six-sector endogenously weighted vulnerability index CCVI(6)
habitat, health, infrastructure and water) across which vulnerability is differs significantly from the Notre Dame vulnerability index ND that
tracked. Each sectoral vulnerability index is itself an arithmetic mean of uses fixed weights to aggregate vulnerability across six sectors, with the
its six component indicators. To illustrate, the Health index is the ar- probability of the two indices being equal less than 1%. The dis-
ithmetic mean of two exposure indicators (projected change of deaths crepancy between the two indices is due to their different weighting
from climate change induced diseases and projected change of length of schemes; all 141 nations are forced to assign equal weights of 1/6 to
transmission season of vector-borne diseases), two sensitivity indicators each sector in the ND index, despite their widely differing vulner-
(slum population and dependency on external resources for health abilities identified in Table 2, but they exploit the freedom to assign
services) and two adaptive capacity indicators (medical staffs and ac- different weights that reflect their different vulnerabilities across sec-
cess to improved sanitation facilities). Details are available from The tors in the CCVI(6) index, a distinct information advantage over the
University of Notre Dame (2015b). The three components are those fixed weights in ND. The two indices are depicted in Fig. 1, with linear
identified as vulnerability drivers in the IPCC Assessment Reports, and trend line in red.
the six sectors are generally consistent with those identified in IPCC Despite the significant difference between the two vulnerability
Assessment Reports and in the academic literature (e.g., Brooks et al., indices, there is strong agreement between them on the identity of the
2005; Eriksen and Kelly, 2007; Hallegatte, 2009; and Füssel, most vulnerable nations, with CCVI(6) agreeing on 11 of the 15 most
2010). Data obtained from the vulnerability component have supported vulnerable nations in ND, contradicting an assertion of Eriksen and
research, particularly as it has related to its determinants (Sarkodie and Kelly that commonly used vulnerability indices fail to agree on the
Strezov, 2019) and its impact on human migration from less developed identity of the most vulnerable countries. In addition, 14 of the 15 most
to more developed nations (Grecequet et al., 2017). vulnerable nations in CCVI(6), and 12 of the 15 most vulnerable na-
The analysis was conducted using the six sectoral vulnerability in- tions in ND, are among the 47 nations in the Least Developed Country
dices, which comprised an unbalanced panel covering up to 192 nations (LDC) category of the United Nations Department of Economic and
over varying time periods beginning in 1995. The 2016 data were Social Affairs and Committee for Development Policy (2018).
chosen in an effort to include as many nations as possible. Eliminating The summary statistics for the endogenous weights for all six sectors
nations failing to report a value for one or more sectors reduced the
sample size in the present study to 141 nations. In contrast, the Notre
Dame Vulnerability Index is available for all 192 nations because it
aggregates as few as 4 of 6 sectors if one or two sectors are missing data,
with exogenous weights of 1/4 or 1/5 replacing 1/6 for these 51 na-
tions. This practice implicitly assigns zero weights to missing sectors in
51 nations and weights of 1/6 to these sectors in 141 nations.
Unfortunately, many of the 51 nations eliminated from the CCVI
data are among the most vulnerable developing nations, SIDS in par-
ticular. Of 38 UN member SIDS, the sample contains just 18, including
four in the Pacific and nine in the Caribbean. However not all elimi-
nated nations are among the most vulnerable; two of the wealthiest
nations, Liechtenstein and Monaco, also were eliminated.
Summary statistics for six sectoral vulnerability indices and 141
nations appear in Table 2. Even after normalization, considerable dis-
persion remains within each sectoral vulnerability index, as indicated
by the Max – Min range within each sectoral index. Dispersion in
Fig. 1. CCVI(6) and ND Vulnerability Indices.

4
H.K. Edmonds, et al. Ecological Indicators 117 (2020) 106529

Table 3
Summary statistics for sector endogenous weights.
Ecosystem Food Human Health Infrastructure Water
Services Habitat

Mean 0.1910 0.1016 0.2340 0.0377 0.1686 0.2742

Std dev 0.2038 0.1328 0.2013 0.1423 0.1484 0.2542
Max 0.8228 0.6794 0.9434 1.1593 0.4770 0.9344
Min 0 0 0 0 0 0
# > 0 97 81 108 16 112 108

for all 141 nations in Table 3 illustrate the wide variation in weights
assigned by nations, both within and across sectors. These en-
dogenously selected weights differ dramatically from the fixed ND
weights of 1/6 (0.1667) for all sectors and all nations.
Table 3 also indicates that one sector, Health, has by far the smallest
average weight, and the least number of positive weights, in the sample.
This is because many nations are relatively vulnerable in the Health
sector, and so DEA assigns a low weight to Health in an effort to
minimize their overall vulnerability CCVI(6). Since 125 of 141 nations
assign a zero weight to the Health sector, this in turn suggests that the
Health sector contributes little to CCVI(6), and is a candidate for de-
letion. Table 4 provides supporting evidence. It shows that Health
sector vulnerability is highly correlated with vulnerability in the Food
sector and, reading across the Health row, Health is the sector that is
the most highly correlated with each of the remaining sectors. It follows
that high Health vulnerability goes hand in hand with, and may be
driven by, high vulnerability in the remaining sectors, particularly
Food. The World Health Organization (2018, nd, nd, nd) has agreed,
and has asserted causality. It has found that adverse impacts of climate
change on food security, safe water and sanitation, ecosystem services,
human habitat, and energy infrastructure all exert a negative influence
on human health. This does not mean that human health has no impact
on a nation’s vulnerability; it does influence vulnerability, but much of
its impact is attributable to vulnerability in other sectors. The re-
mainder may be due to a lag effect; throughout its Assessment Reports
the IPCC has asserted, with very high confidence, that climate change
affects human health primarily by exacerbating existing health pro-
blems.
The reduced index CCVI(5) also differs significantly from the ND
index, although CCVI(5) also agrees on 11 of the 15 most vulnerable
nations in ND. The two indices are depicted in Fig. 2, with linear trend
line in red. The strong similarity between Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 provides an
initial indication that the distribution of CCVI(5) may not differ sig-
nificantly from that of CCVI(6), and that the Health sector can be de-
leted without significant loss of information about the distribution of
vulnerability to climate change across nations.
Using the ratio γ = CCVI(5)/CCVI(6) ≦ 1, the results show a mean
value of γ = 0.998, with γ = 1 for the 125 nations assigning a zero
weight to the Health sector, and for which deleting the Health sector
has absolutely no impact on its CCVI, and 0.99 < 1 < γ for six na-
tions for which deleting the Health sector has a barely perceptible
impact on its CCVI. The most affected nation, The Netherlands, assigns
Fig. 2. CCVI(5) and ND Vulnerability Indices.
the highest weight in the sample to the Health sector, and has γ = 0.93.
The next two most affected nations are France (γ = 0.95) and Cuba
(γ = 0.96). All three have excellent health care systems, and would
benefit most from inclusion of the Health sector. Nonetheless the null
hypothesis that the Health sector can be deleted could not be rejected,
since the probability that the distributions of the two vulnerability in-
dices differ is less than 1%. The two vulnerability indices are essentially
the same, a conclusion illustrated in Fig. 3. The endogenous weights in
CCVI(5) are almost identical to the same five weights in CCVI(6) re-
ported in Table 3. Following the same testing procedure, the null hy-
pothesis that any sector other than Health can be deleted from CCVI(6)
without statistically significant loss of information could be rejected.
The same testing procedure was followed to reject the hypothesis that
any one of the five remaining sectors can be deleted from the composite
climate change vulnerability index CCVI(5).
The global distribution of CCVI(5) is mapped in Fig. 4. The most
vulnerable nations are located in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and
among the few SIDS in the data. Most of these nations are included in
the global 1.5 °C hotspot regions identified by Schleussner et al. (2018),
the extremely and significantly vulnerable regions identified by Yohe
et al. (2006), and the most vulnerable developing nations identified by
Closset et al. (2017). As IPCC has claimed throughout its Assessment
Reports, vulnerability varies with non-climatic variables, with location
being closely correlated with the components of the three sub-indices of
the Economic Vulnerability Index.
5. Conclusions
The results illustrate the analytical and practical contributions of
the methodology to the study of national vulnerability to climate
change.

Table 4
Correlation coefficients among sector vulnerability indexes.
Health Ecosystem Food Human Infrastructure Water
Services Habitat

Health 1 0.600 0.807 0.630 0.297 0.308

Ecosystem 1 0.583 0.409 0.018 0.232
Services
Food 1 0.492 0.157 0.295
Habitat 1 0.123 0.064
Infrastructure 1 0.111
Water 1
Fig. 3. CCVI(6) and CCVI(5) Vulnerability Indices.

5
H.K. Edmonds, et al.
Fig. 4. Global Distribution of CCVI(5).
(i) Exogenously-generated fixed-weight aggregation has been widely,
and properly, criticized as a methodology for constructing com-
posite indices. The Notre Dame vulnerability index ND is one of
several environmental indices based on a fixed-weight aggregation
methodology. An alternative aggregation methodology has been
proposed and implemented here, one that is popular in business
and economics, and that generates endogenous-weight aggrega-
tion. National data from the University of Notre Dame Global
Adaptation Initiative have been used to compare climate change
vulnerability indices generated by the ND and CCVI methodolo-
gies, and the two indices are found to differ in a statistically sig-
nificant way.
(ii) The endogenous weights in the CCVI index may be interpreted as
shadow prices that respect differences in nations’ exposure, sensi-
tivity and adaptive capacity to climate change, and it is argued that
these weights have the potential to serve as proxies for missing
market prices with policy implications for the development of
adaptation and mitigation pathways designed to reduce the cost of
limiting vulnerability to climate change.
(iii) The orientation of a DEA program is specified by the analyst,
ideally guided by policy considerations. The orientation of the DEA
program in the present study is guided by the belief that vulner-
ability to climate change is an undesirable characteristic of a na-
tion, and is therefore to be minimized, presumably through policy
actions designed to increase adaptation and mitigation efforts. It is
possible to reverse the orientation of the DEA program from one of
minimizing vulnerability to one of maximizing vulnerability, al-
though the policy considerations behind the reversal are unclear.
However in this case the DEA program would assign relatively
large aggregation weights to the Health sector for the majority of
nations.
(iv) A nonparametric statistical test of the null hypothesis that a vul-
nerability sector is superfluous and can be deleted from a
6
Ecological Indicators 117 (2020) 106529
composite climate change vulnerability index without statistically
significant loss of information, and with potentially considerable
cost savings, was conducted. This test helps to identify a minimal
set of key sectors whose inclusion is essential to the construction of
an informative vulnerability index. The World Health Organization
has provided support for the deletion of the Health sector from the
composite index, on the basis that human health is itself a function
of other sectoral indices such as food security. From a methodo-
logical perspective, explanatory power can be improved by re-
moving the Health index or replacing it with another index that is
less highly correlated with other sectoral indices.
(v) The most vulnerable nations were identified. They are located
primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and among the
SIDS, in accordance with previous findings.
The methodology and empirical findings have generated two re-
commendations for future research.
(i) By studying what sectoral source(s) of national vulnerability can be
deleted without statistically significant loss of information, this
analysis responds to the challenge of quantifying the magnitude of
variation in vulnerability across nations in a parsimonious way. An
altogether different challenge might also be addressed by asking
what variable(s) or indices could be added to the analysis that
would provide a statistically significant gain in information. This
alternative challenge would seek to identify the sources of variation
in vulnerability across nations. In its Assessment Reports the IPCC
has identified numerous non-climatic sources. Geographic variables
(Nordhaus, 2006) could be added to these, such as distance to the
equator, a popular explanatory variable in the economic develop-
ment literature (Hall and Jones, 1999). An alternative candidate is
an index of social economic progress, as conceived by Stiglitz et al.
(2009) and currently under development at the OECD (2018). The
H.K. Edmonds, et al.
two challenges are complementary. The first challenge has been
addressed in the present study, and research into the second can be
accomplished simply by adding the desired additional variables to
the DEA program in Table 1 and following the same testing pro-
cedure.
(ii) The Notre Dame Vulnerability Index ND contains 192 nations in
2016, while the index CCVI generated by DEA contains just 141
nations. DEA requires an equal number of sectors for each nation,
so 51 nations had to be removed from the data, many of which are
LDCs and SIDS. Kuosmanen (2009) has proposed a DEA model that
can accommodate missing observations, essentially replacing
missing observations with a “big M” from linear programming. This
approach is a promising way of increasing degrees of freedom in
any DEA analysis, the present study of the vulnerability of nations
to climate change in particular.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influ-
ence the work reported in this paper.
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