climate resilient systems | caring futures | equal cities
Care Sufficiency Index
Seeing where care systems are holding & where they’re failing
Resource Type
Tool
Current Status
Under active methodological refinement and calibration. Initiative designed for testing real world application.
A composite index that measures how adequately and equitably care needs are met across cities, and other geographic regions, adjusted for climate vulnerability.
01
What it is?
A composite, climate-adjusted index that produces a score between 0 and 1, indicating how well a geography (city, district, state, or country) meets the care needs of its population. The CSI reflects a geographical region’s overall level of care sufficiency, where higher scores indicate greater adequacy, equity, and resilience of the care system.
The CSI is built on 4 interdependent dimensions of care sufficiency
Care Needs & Burden (Demand)
Care Provisioning & Access (Supply)
Care Affordability & Equity (Financial Access)
Enabling Conditions (Systemic Support)
02
Why it is being developed?
Care systems are critical to economic stability and social resilience, yet there is no standardised, comparable way to measure whether care needs are actually being met, or whether households are compensating through unpaid labour, debt, or foregone income, including under climate induced stress.
Without such a measure:
policy prioritisation is weak
financing decisions are poorly targeted
and climate impacts on care remain invisible until crises occur
Designed for global comparability and scalability, the CSI can be computed at city, district, state, national, and international levels to inform policy, budgeting, and social protection planning.
03
What it enables in the C² architecture?
Identification of care-fragile, care-stressed, care-stable, and care-resilient geographies
Comparison of care adequacy across places and over time
Early identification of climate-amplified care deficits
Simulation of policy and investment “what-if” scenarios (e.g. expanding childcare coverage)
Integration of care considerations into policy, budgeting, and financing decisions
04
Current & Potential Use Cases
City/State/Federal Governments - Use CSI to identify neighbourhoods where climate induced stress is most likely to overwhelm care capacity and erode resilience. Used for prioritising evacuation and relief for households with dependents, planning climate-resilient care infrastructure (childcare, eldercare, cooling shelters), targeting investments to care-deficient areas rather than spreading resources thinly.
Social Protection - Trigger care-based cash transfers or service top-ups when climate shocks exceed threshold (early warning → care response).
Insurance - within product design, integrate care compensation into climate risk insurance (for care disruptions, loss of caregiving capacity).
06
Related Resources
explore resources we are developing, the practical building blocks behind the care-climate (C²) risk management and decision support architecture. These resources are developed through applied pilots and ongoing initiatives. Together, they translate care and climate (C²) dynamics into operational insight for finance, policy, and urban planning, resource allocation and governance systems.
Climate & Care (C²) Responsive Blended Finance Facility
Initiative
Design
A South Asia pilot initiative across India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal to design and test a care & climate (C²) responsive blended finance model, informed by household resilience insights and generating evidence for replication across emerging Asian economies.
