Funding Resilience or Missing the Mark? An Analysis of RRF Allocation and Climate Risk Alignment in Italian Municipalities

Natural hazards are an increasing concern, placing disaster preparedness and mitigation at the forefront of policy agendas. In this context, Italy’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) has allocated €3 billion for explicit disaster prevention, with a primary focus on hydrogeological risks such as floods and landslides. This study evaluates the geographical and thematic distribution of resilience-related funding, examining whether financial resources have been effectively targeted toward municipalities with the highest exposure to environmental hazards. Using a clustering classification, we identify substantial disparities in the allocation of resilience funds, revealing that municipalities with relatively low risk levels often receive disproportionately high funding, while high-risk areas remain underfunded. To explore the underlying drivers of this misalignment, we apply a multinomial logit model to assess the socio-economic and geographic determinants of these funding disparities. Our findings indicate that GDP, macro-regional location, and past disaster occurrences significantly influence whether a municipality falls into a misallocated funding cluster. The misalignment between risk exposure and funding allocation raises questions about the criteria used for distributing adaptation investments and highlights the necessity for a more risk-sensitive and equitable approach.