The University of Notre Dame's Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN) has adopted a new measure of economic readiness in its latest update of its flagship Country Index. As a result, the Index’s climate readiness rankings of economies around the world have shifted. This year’s release replaces the World Bank's discontinued Doing Business (DB) Index with the organization's new Business Ready (B-READY) Index as the Country Index's new economic readiness indicator.
Updated annually, the Country Index quantifies the climate vulnerability and readiness of more than 180 countries by aggregating 45 core indicators. The ND-GAIN Country Index’s economic readiness indicator measures a country’s capability to attract adaptation investment: funding that enables improved community and business resilience to the impacts of climate change.
The newly integrated B-READY Index assesses the investment climate across three pillars — regulatory framework, public services, and operational efficiency — and 10 topics: business entry, business location, utility services, labor, financial services, international trade, taxation, dispute resolution, market competition, and business insolvency. The B-READY Index’s assessment of the regulatory framework focuses on policy and law, while primary data collection is employed to evaluate public services and operational efficiency for each topic.
The previously-integrated DB indicators were determined by assessing the investment climate across similar topics; the DB report was discontinued by the World Bank after an internal review found evidence of data manipulation by some governments. B-READY was developed in response, built around a more transparent methodology and two data sources rather than one.
“Where Doing Business relied heavily on interpretations of policy and regulatory law, B-READY combines this approach with direct surveys of business operating in that economy to measure what happens in practice,” said Danielle Wood, director of ND-GAIN and associate professor of the practice at the Environmental Change Initiative. “What’s actually happening on the ground can be quite different from the legal and regulatory frameworks.”
With the integration of B-READY data, the economic readiness score of Bangladesh, Benin, Cambodia, Colombia, Italy, and Jordan saw the greatest rise. In contrast, Armenia, Bhutan, Samoa, Seychelles, Tunisia, and Uruguay saw a decline.
To date, the World Bank has released B-READY data for 101 countries across world regions and economic strata, with analysis for most of the remaining economies to come later this year. For the current Country Index update, ND-GAIN researchers generated placeholder estimates from regional counterparts for those countries awaiting official B-READY data.
“We’re excited about the quality of the B-READY approach and look forward to strengthening the economic readiness indicator of the Country Index as more data is released and updated in the years to come,” Wood said.
Free and open source, the ND-GAIN Country Index helps decision-makers in governments, nongovernmental organizations, corporations, and academia prioritize investments for a more effective response to the global challenges ahead, such as migration, water conflict, food insecurity, and energy planning. To learn about ND-GAIN or the Country Index, visit ND-GAIN’s website. For more detailed information about the methodology of the Country Index, view the technical document.
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Originally published by at gain.nd.edu on July 15, 2026.