The Climate Conflict Vulnerability Index: Mapping Global (Co-)occurrence of Climate and Conflict Risk

Climate and conflict hazards both threaten human security, and where they coincide their effects may compound. Yet global risk assessments often lack transparency and do not clearly distinguish between climate risk, conflict risk, and the vulnerabilities that shape both. We introduce the Climate Conflict Vulnerability Index (CCVI) to assess where, to what extent, and under which conditions climate and conflict risks (co-)occur. The CCVI is a global index at 0.5° x 0.5° spatial resolution and updated quarterly and harmonizes a wide range of indicators based on publicly available data to create measures of climate and conflict risk together with a combined score identifying places exposed to both. Applying the index globally, we find that combined climate-conflict risk is generally low to moderate, but highly concentrated in specific regions, with the highest levels observed in Africa between the Sahel belt and the equator. We further show that climate and conflict risks are spatially correlated in an asymmetric way: high conflict risk rarely occurs where climate risk is low, whereas high climate risk occurs across the full range of conflict risk. By separating shared vulnerability from climate and conflict hazards, the CCVI helps identify location-specific risk profiles. It constitutes an openly accessible, transparent tool for comparing climate-conflict risk patterns across sub-national regions worldwide.