Paul Vernus (CERDI, UCA)

Paul Vernus
CERDI, UCA

Résumé

Who counts as 'particularly vulnerable' to climate change, and at what scale should that judgment be made to allocate international public finance for adaptation? The Paris Agreement answers at the level of sovereign Parties, singling out Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries and defining vulnerability through geography and socio-economic conditions. This approach rests on the implicit assumption that climate risk is homogeneous within countries and on a narrow construct of vulnerability that omits structural, power-related factors. We test the first and relax the second by applying hierarchical clustering, grounded in the IPCC risk framework, to second-level administrative units across non-Annex I Parties, recovering distinct risk profiles. Preliminary results depart from the post-Paris framing in three ways: (i) the recognized Party groupings conceal substantial internal heterogeneity; (ii) politically marginalized populations emerge as a hidden dimension of climate risk; and (iii) many high-risk units sit in middle-income states excluded from current allocation debates.