Swedish Bilateral Climate Change Adaptation Aid: Comparing Practice with Evidence

Sammanfattning

Climate change is predicted to intensify, even in the most optimistic IPCC
models. This will have severe consequences for ecosystems, biodiversity
and human societies. These developments have already and will continue
to necessitate extensive climate change adaptation (CCA) measures in
societies and communities around the globe. Many of the poorest and
most marginalized countries are also the most vulnerable to climate
change. Despite their need for extensive CCA measures, a significant
funding gap persists.

International aid donors are well-positioned to address this gap. Swedish
adaptation aid increased from about 1 percent of total annual aid to a
relatively stable level between 5.5% and 6.5% since 2019. The purpose of
this working paper is to analyse the structure of Swedish bilateral CCA aid
and assess its alignment with current research evidence on the
effectiveness of CCA measures. As such, its contributions are threefold.

• It identifies trends within the Swedish CCA portfolio and assesses the
relevance of the selection of recipient countries.
• It introduces novel data and maps the portfolio according to CCArelated
sectors, intervention types, and outcomes.
• It compares the portfolio to the evidence on CCA interventions from
research literature.