PCLM-D-23-00282

Climate-related bilateral official development assistance (ODA) and vulnerability: a comparative study of allocation and effectiveness

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Nomura,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Three reviewers have now provided feedback on your paper. Based on these reviews and my own reading of the paper, I recommend major revisions to the paper. Both the theoretical contributions and engagement with the literature need to be strengthened, as well as important revisions to the empirical analysis, as both reviewers 2 and 3 point out.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 07 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

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• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Laura Kuhl

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

1. Please amend your detailed Financial Disclosure statement. This is published with the article. It must therefore be completed in full sentences and contain the exact wording you wish to be published.

a. State the initials, alongside each funding source, of each author to receive each grant.

b. If any authors received a salary from any of your funders, please state which authors and which funders.

If you did not receive any funding for this study, please simply state: “The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: 1. The paper lacks a clear discussion on the research gap. It would be helpful if the author delves into the issue, explaining why this study is important.

2. To enhance the literature review, the author could explore previous studies on this specific issue.

3. Most references appear outdated and do not seem to reflect the current discussion in this paper. Please update

4. Please clarify what the authors meant by bilateral (and multilateral) climate-related ODA

5. Please elaborate on the concept of vulnerability in this study.

6. There seems to be missing content in L. 359-360.

Reviewer #2: This manuscript explores patterns in climate-related ODA allocation between 2002 and 2021, across donor, recipient countries, sectors and by change in ODA and in vulnerability. The authors find an overall increase in climate-related ODA, and strong inequalities between countries: some donors thus provide much more than others, and similarly, some countries receive much more support than others.

While I see merit in an exploration of the OECD CRS data on climate-related aid, I think the paper is at the moment rather atheoretical and would benefit from a stronger link to previous research on (climate) aid allocation to situate their analysis in a broader debate and emphasise their specific contribution(s).

First, the introduction at the moment just broadly refers to advances in global climate negotiations – I would first disagree with the rather positive evaluation of the global response on climate change. Second, and more importantly, I think the authors could here engage much more with the literature on aid allocation, specifically that of adaptation aid allocation. We already know quite a bit about why some countries receive more climate support than others, which is partly but not solely related to differences in vulnerability.

Second, and on a related point: I understand that the authors implicitly assume that more vulnerable countries should get more climate-related ODA. Yet this link arguably only applies to adaptation, where the international community has also explicitly agreed to prioritise vulnerable countries. For mitigation (e.g., renewable energy projects), it seems more plausible that polluting countries would receive more support – the most vulnerable countries tend to have very little emissions anyhow, so they would not necessarily need or want so much mitigation support.

In general, it would be useful to specify theoretical considerations; why, for example, is it interesting to compare donors, sectors, and recipients? Why does the percentage change matter? Here, I admit that I am not an expert of the regression techniques used. I noticed that the authors compute year-to-year changes in both, vulnerability and ODA. Arguably, annual changes are not suitable for either indicator. First, I would not expect vulnerability to vary strongly from one year to the next, unless the indicator focuses a lot on extreme weather events such as cyclones and their damages. In which case aid allocations may be expected to increase with some delay (esp. humanitarian aid). Much climate vulnerability is however a result of slow-onset changes, such as sea-level rise, which does not vary so much from one year to the next. Second, ODA allocations do vary a lot from one year to the next, because it is often for multi-year projects. If a donor, say France, allocates a big climate project that runs over 5 years to a recipient, say Niger, in year Y, they are unlikely to allocate again a large sum of climate-related ODA to Niger in Y+1. I am therefore not sure what we can really learn from comparing annual percentage changes in vulnerability in ODA.

I was also not clear on how the authors deal with adaptation vs. mitigation and significant vs. principal ODA. How do they account for a project that has both adaptation and mitigation as its principal target (i.e., Rio Marker of 2 for both adaptation and mitigation)?

It is not very surprising that some countries provide more ODA – Japan, France and Germany are not only the largest donors, but also among the largest economies. Austria or New Zealand are much smaller and hence clearly also have smaller aid budgets (though they may in fact be larger as a percent of GDP!). The same applies for recipients. The authors describe the distribution of climate-related ODA as “inequitable” (p. 20) - but can you really draw such conclusions from your analysis? India is the largest country in terms of population so it should naturally attract more funding than say Guinea-Bissau. What about per capita aid? Did you also consider comparing recipient countries on per capita terms? That comparison seems a much better indicator of who is “prioritised” by donors, and whether the distribution is “equitable” – a concept that would need to be defined in any case.

A few minor remarks:

- I would prefer research questions to your list of objectives (p. 5)

- for the sectors, a table might be clearer (p. 7)

- it would be interesting to also distinguish loans and grants. Japan for example stands out as very generous, but much of their ODA is given as loans rather than grants.

- the Rio marker for adaptation was only introduced in 2009.

Overall, I think the data is interesting and worth exploring, but the authors will need to think more about the broader literature and debate, and what they can contribute to it.

Reviewer #3: Overall, the manuscript makes a much-needed contribution to the literature on tracking climate-related ODA in view of the increasing gap between global climate finance needs and provision. The study provides valuable comprehensive insights into the overall allocation of climate-related ODA over a long period. It takes stock of the temporal and geographical allocation of bilateral climate finance. While the manuscript provides a detailed overview of the allocation of climate-related ODA, the assessment of effectiveness needs more clarification (see point no.1 below). The study concludes by providing a quantitative approach to gauge the efficacy of ODA in vulnerability reduction (different from effectiveness). The manuscript title needs to be revised if the study assesses the efficacy of climate-related ODA.

1. The article could make more explicit the definition and understanding of the effectiveness of climate-related ODA. As the authors reflect later in the discussion, the allocation of ODA to vulnerable countries does not imply a direct translation of reduced vulnerability. Hence, it is important to clarify how the manuscript assesses the effectiveness of the allocated ODA.

2. While the temporal patterns, including the EAAPC, provides interesting insights into the annual changes in the distribution of climate-related ODA, the article could make more clear the implication and recommendations out of these patterns. In this regard, it was difficult to follow which time period was considered for which part of the analysis. For example, the adaptation and cross-cutting amounts only appeared to be included from 2011 whereas mitigation amounts from 2002 (Supplementary Figure 2), the overall bilateral ODA to climate from 2002 to 2021 but the tracking of the funding to vulnerable countries from 2011, the top 20 recipients of climate related ODA for 2020 and not 2021 (Supplementary Table 3). A table showing which analysis using which variables were conducted over which time period would be immensely useful. Moreover, the changes in the EAAPC in vulnerability and ODA could be linked more clearly. For example, did countries experiencing a higher vulnerability over the time frame experience a similar increase in ODA or vice versa?

3. While the OECD database is often used in tracking climate-related ODA due to its comprehensive overview, the article should point out the challenges associated with the Rio Marker methodology in tagging aid as climate-related and further classification as mitigation or adaptation.

4. From a donor perspective, the study provides notable patterns highlighting the largest contributors as well as the disparities among different donor countries. The authors may consider reflecting on the nations’ economy size and population (e.g. GDP per capita) to compare their ODA contributions to climate-related aid. The analysis could consider for example, adjusting the amounts provided for GDP per capita of the donor countries. While this is currently mentioned as a limitation of the study, this inclusion could provide a more nuanced picture and interpretation of the findings. Similarly, the adjustment of received bilateral ODA for the recipient countries’ GDP per capita might provide a more nuanced picture. For example, the manuscript highlights India as the leading recipient of bilateral climate ODA. It would be helpful to know how this compares with other countries when the amounts are adjusted for their GDP and population.

5. In addition to the sectoral trends of climate-related ODA, the authors could provide their reflections on the allocation of mitigation and adaptation funding. Given this analysis takes into account the vulnerability of recipient countries, reflecting on the allocation of adaptation amounts in comparison to vulnerability scores is important. This dedicated analysis would provide a more nuanced picture since the vulnerability of countries should be a priority criterion in the allocation of adaptation funding. A segregated correlation analysis of adaptation and mitigation amounts with vulnerability scores would be very useful in my view. The implication of the correlation analysis of climate-related ODA with vulnerability scores according to regional distribution is unclear.

6. While the role of vulnerability in the allocation of adaptation support is clear, the allocation of mitigation support could be analyzed for other indicators such as the expected reduction in emissions or the per capita emissions of the receiving countries.

7. Furthermore, while the World Risk Index is a leading risk index globally, it would be helpful to clarify the choice of the World Risk Report’s vulnerability indicator, as opposed to the vulnerability indicators of other risk indices such as the ND-GAIN and INFORM index. As every index has a slightly different calculation of vulnerability, the authors might reflect on the differences in the vulnerability picture that the choice of one index over another implies. In this regard, the authors could provide a list of countries (in reference to the 116 countries taken in the analysis) and the vulnerability scores in the Supplementary Material. Have their been countries that received climate-related ODA but could not be included in the analysis due to the missing values from the World Risk Index?

8. Given the different time periods and methodologies used to calculate climate-related ODA (before the Rio Marker and after), it would be helpful to highlight if this affects the calculation of climate-related ODA in the OECD database for funding before and after 2011.

Other comments

a. Line 83 – The authors could support the importance of ODA for climate finance in providing an overview on the total share of bilateral ODA in the larger climate finance landscape. In the conclusion, the article could reflect on the overall role of bilateral ODA vis-à-vis multilateral funding on the role of vulnerability reduction.

b. Does the funding data refer to the committed or disbursed values on the bilateral ODA?

c. On page 7, Lines 118-129 could be turned into a Table (and potentially shifted to the Supplementary Material)

d. Line 247 suggests the top 20 countries at risk – does this refer to the risk values or vulnerability scores?

e. Line 360 is missing the first words

Data availability:

While the link to the OECD database is provided and the EAAPC in vulnerability is included in the Supplementary Material, the data for the vulnerability scores of all 116 countries is not provided.

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6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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PCLM-D-23-00282R1

Climate-related bilateral official development assistance (ODA) and vulnerability: a comparative study of allocation and effectiveness

PLOS Climate

Dear Dr. Nomura,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS Climate. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your substantial revisions to your paper. The revised paper has now been reviewed by all three original reviewers, and they agree that this version is a significant improvement and is much stronger. However, they still have several important suggestions for improvements. Please see their comments, and I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Sep 22 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at climate@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pclm/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Laura Kuhl

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

Journal Requirements:

1. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

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2. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Climate’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: I don't know

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Climate does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I have reviewed the paper and am satisfied since all my previous comments have already been addressed by the authors.

However, I found that the literature review needs to be strengthened to include the issue of ODA and other relevant topics. It would be beneficial if the author could refer to the readings listed below to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the issue.

1. Araki, M. (2007) Japan's Official Development Assistance: The Japan ODA Model That Began Life in Southeast Asia. Asia-Pacific review. 14(2), 17-29

2. Dollah, R., Peters, D., Hassan, W.S.W. et al. (2023) Japan’s Advocacy for Human Security in Global Politics: Case Study of Japan’s Grant Assistance for Grass-Roots Human Security Projects (GGP) in the State of Sabah, Malaysia, 2000–2021. East Asia. 40, 151–174

3. Cole, W. (2022) Aiding Human Rights? The Effect of U.S., European, and Chinese Development Assistance on Rights Practices in Recipient Countries, 2001 to 2017. International Journal of Sociology. 52(4), 253-283

4. etc

Reviewer #2: This manuscript assesses bilateral climate-related ODA (“climate aid” in the following). More specifically, the authors use data from the OECD to study the allocation and effectiveness of climate aid, whereby they are particularly interested in two aspects: (i) do vulnerable countries receive more climate aid?; and (ii) does more climate aid translate into vulnerability reduction?

The paper’s main strength lies in the interesting descriptive analyses of the OECD data on climate-related aid. On the other hand, it suffers from a number of conceptual and empirical shortcomings that make the paper unpublishable as is, as I explain in the following.

First, the paper does not engage sufficiently with relevant literature, nor does it present any theoretical argument or hypotheses to be tested. There is a large literature on the allocation of climate-related ODA that is not even mentioned. Several scholars have studied how donors allocate their climate aid, especially adaptation aid. Not to speak of the vast general literature on aid allocation and aid effectiveness beyond climate change that the authors also barely refer to.

Second, and related to the very short literature review, the authors do not develop any theory or expectations. I have several questions about their implicit assumptions. For example, to what extent does it make sense to analyse both adaptation and mitigation aid? Why would a donor want to invest in mitigation projects in vulnerable countries, when these need aid for adaptation and often also have very limited greenhouse gas emissions? Similarly, why should a mitigation project (e.g., a renewable energy project) reduce a country’s vulnerability score? I can see an indirect link, in that development also helps with climate resilience, but I wouldn’t expect the direct link that the authors seem to be looking for.

Third, and again in the same vein, I have the impression that the authors want to do too much at once. They list 3 research questions, which are all composed of two questions, so the authors actually have a list of 6 research questions, which is too many for a single paper. It may be worth separating the question of allocation from that of effectiveness, which would also create space for a more thorough literature review and theory.

Fourth, I have several questions about the empirical approach. For example, I don’t understand the interest in the sectoral analysis. To which research question does this respond? Why compare overall aid amounts rather than per capita amounts? It is not surprising that Oceania for example “received less than 1% of mitigation-focused ODA” (p. 11) -- it’s very small in terms of population and also in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, many Pacific island countries are among the highest per capita recipients of (climate) aid. I have also an overall question around causality and temporality. I am not very convinced by the simple correlations between climate aid and vulnerability scores/GDP per capita – especially when I learn that the vulnerability score used also considers non-climatic risks (p. 17), even when there are also specific climate vulnerability indicators. In addition, there are many other factors influencing both allocation and vulnerability or economic development, as the authors also point out (p. 16). Why did they not include “external determinants” (p. 16) in their analysis? The authors need to clearly specify and consider time lags, an issue the authors themselves note at the very end of the paper (p. 17). The link between climate (or more precisely: adaptation) aid and vulnerability could be both ways: more vulnerable countries receive more adaptation aid; or more adaptation aid means less vulnerability. This needs to be at least discussed.

Fifth, a more minor points: The authors tend to speak of ODA only but unless I am mistaken, they mean climate-related ODA. They should pay attention to that distinction, which is important, just as the distinction between adaptation and mitigation. A final small remark: The Rio Marker for climate change was only split into adaptation and mitigation in 2009 – yet this does not mean that there were no adaptation projects between 2002 and 2009 (p. 11), they were only not marked as such.

Reviewer #3: The authors have significantly revised the manuscript, clarifying many open questions. Two points could be addressed more clearly as they are crucial to the paper:

1. A clear definition of effectiveness would be very helpful.

2. A comparison of the amount of bilateral climate finance in relation to multi-lateral and other sources would provide a clearer comparison of the role of bilateral ODA.

Thank you for your responses and I hope the suggestions were helpful.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Carola Klöck

Reviewer #3: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Climate-related bilateral official development assistance (ODA) and vulnerability: a comparative study of allocation and effectiveness

PCLM-D-23-00282R2

Dear Prof. Nomura,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Climate-related bilateral official development assistance (ODA) and vulnerability: a comparative study of allocation and effectiveness' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Climate.

Before your manuscript can be formally accepted you will need to complete some formatting changes, which you will receive in a follow-up email from a member of our team. 

Please note that your manuscript will not be scheduled for publication until you have made the required changes, so a swift response is appreciated.

IMPORTANT: The editorial review process is now complete. PLOS will only permit corrections to spelling, formatting or significant scientific errors from this point onwards. Requests for major changes, or any which affect the scientific understanding of your work, will cause delays to the publication date of your manuscript.

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Thank you again for supporting Open Access publishing; we are looking forward to publishing your work in PLOS Climate.

Best regards,

Laura Kuhl

Academic Editor

PLOS Climate

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Dear Authors,

Thank you for your detailed response to the reviewer feedback. The article is now much stronger, and I believe makes a strong contribution to the field. Congratulations!

Best,

Laura Kuhl

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):