Original ClimateZero index36 countries scored
Every country on this site shows two numbers that rarely get put side by side: how much a country has contributed to climate change since 1850, and how much it is losing to it in GDP terms today. This index does exactly that, for every country with both figures published on ClimateZero, so the imbalance at the heart of climate governance is visible at a glance rather than buried across separate pages.
This is a deliberately simple, transparent index, not a claim to precision. It exists to make one argument visible: the countries that did the least to cause climate change are very often the ones paying the highest price for it, in proportion to the size of their economies. That imbalance is the central fact of climate justice debates in international negotiations, and it is easy to lose sight of it in emissions league tables alone.
Gap score = historical emissions share (%) − estimated annual climate GDP loss (%). Both figures are already published on this site's individual country pages. Where a GDP loss figure is given as a range, the midpoint is used. Countries without both figures published are excluded rather than estimated.
Historical emissions share reflects responsibility: who put the CO2 in the atmosphere that is driving warming today. GDP loss reflects present-day cost: who is economically bearing the consequences right now. Both are already normalised for country size, share of a global total, and share of a national economy, so they can be compared directly.
This index does not weigh population, per-capita emissions, historical colonial extraction, or non-economic loss such as displacement, culture, or lives lost, all of which matter enormously in climate justice scholarship. It is one deliberately narrow, legible lens, not a complete account.
Historical emissions share: Our World in Data. GDP loss estimates: sourced per country on each country profile page. Full dataset: download the CSV.