About Multidimensional Vulnerability Index:
- It is a new international quantitative benchmark to measure structural vulnerability and the lack of structural resilience across multiple dimensions of sustainable development at the national level.
- It is set to act as a complement to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and other development metrics.
- Aim: It aims to capture exogenous vulnerabilities and lack of resilience to exogenous shocks of all developing countries, so as to ensure credibility and comparability.
- Background
- Since the 1990s, small island developing states (SIDS) that are not poor enough in terms of GDP per capita to access low-interest development financing but nonetheless face vulnerability to external shocks like climate change have been calling for such a measure.
- It incorporates indicators linked to a state’s structural vulnerabilities and lack of economic, environmental and social resilience.
- These factors include import dependency, exposure to extreme weather events and pandemics, impacts of regional violence, refugees, demographic pressure, water and arable land resources and mortality of children under five.
- Significance: It is a vital tool to help Small Island nations gain access to the concessional financing that they need to survive the climate catastrophe, to improve their long-term national planning, service their debts, and sign up to insurance and compensation schemes that may be their last hope when the waters rise.
