Global adaptation readiness and income mitigate sectoral climate change vulnerabilities

Abstract

Abstract Climate change has become a global burden, requiring strong institutional quality and willingness to mitigate future impacts. Though emissions are transboundary and have the tendency of spreading from high emitting countries to low emitting countries, regional exposure, sensitivity, and adaptation readiness determine the extent of climate effects. The existing literature focuses on immediate drivers and damages of emission effects, failing to account for underlying mechanisms occurring via the nexus between emission levels, economic, social, and governance adaptation readiness. Here, this study broadens the scope of previous attempts and simultaneously examines climate change vulnerability across sectors including ecosystem services, food, health, human habitat, infrastructure, and water. We use the Romano–Wolf technique to test multiple hypotheses and present the spatial–temporal severity of climate vulnerability and readiness to combat climate change and its impacts. Besides, we assess the long-term impact of climate change readiness and income expansion on sectoral-climate vulnerabilities. We find that high-income economies with high social, governance, and economic readiness have low climate vulnerability whereas developing economies with low income have high climate change exposure and sensitivity. Our empirical evidence could be used to prioritize limited resources in addressing and managing adaptive actions of extreme climate change vulnerabilities.