As climate change intensifies globally, developing countries face increasingly complex and compounding challenges. Widening gaps between their exposure to climate risks and their capacity to respond threaten to reverse decades of development gains and undermine sustainable development pathways. In this context, 'climate resilience' has emerged as a central concept in development cooperation, encompassing not only the capacity to withstand climate shocks but also the ability to adapt and pursue transformative change in response to long-term climate stress. Despite its growing prominence in international discourse, however, the concept has not been sufficiently translated into operational frameworks and measurable practices. Within Korea's ODA system in particular, climate resilience has yet to be systematically developed as an analytical and operational framework: it frequently appears in policy language and project titles without being meaningfully embedded in strategic design, results frameworks, or performance management. This conceptual ambiguity limits the effectiveness of climate resilience investments and undermines accountability for results.

This study addresses this gap by systematically reconceptualizing climate resilience within the context of development cooperation. It examines how the concept has evolved theoretically, how it has been measured in academic literature and by international organizations, how it is reflected in global cooperation trends, and how it is currently positioned within Korea's ODA system. On the basis of these analyses, the study proposes policy directions for the structural and operational integration of climate resilience into Korea's development cooperation.

Chapter 2 examines the conceptual foundations and measurement of climate resilience. Originally rooted in ecology as a concept describing a system's capacity to recover from disturbance, resilience has been progressively extended into the social, economic, and institutional domains. In international development, it now encompasses a multi-dimensional set of capacities: the ability to anticipate and prepare for climate risks, to absorb shocks when they occur, to adapt over time, and to pursue transformative change toward more sustainable configurations. This expanded understanding is reflected in the frameworks developed by major international organizations, including the OECD's Resilience Systems Analysis (RSA), the World Bank's Resilience Rating System (RRS), FAO's Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA), and the WHO's Health Systems Resilience (HSR) approach. These frameworks have contributed to translating the concept into measurable terms relevant to development programming.

To map the current state of climate resilience measurement in the academic literature, this study conducted a scoping review of 52 peer-reviewed articles published between 2015 and 2025. In terms of definition, most studies emphasize absorptive and adaptive functions, while a smaller but growing share incorporates transformative capacity; a notable proportion, however, leaves the concept undefined. The concept is most frequently applied in sectors such as agriculture, urban systems, disaster risk management, water resources, and public health, with heat stress, flooding, and drought as dominant hazards. While household and individual levels remain the primary units of analysis, studies also extend to urban, national, and governance-system levels. Resilience is consistently measured as a multi-dimensional construct, most commonly organized around social, physical, economic, environmental, institutional, and human capital dimensions, and often structured through established frameworks such as the five capitals model or the absorptive–adaptive–transformative typology. Methodologically, composite indices remain prevalent, with secondary data most commonly used (46.2%), followed by primary data (38.5%) and mixed approaches (15.4%), alongside a growing use of mixed methods and satellite-derived data. Persistent limitations include the difficulty of capturing institutional and social dimensions, limited longitudinal data, and the lack of standardized frameworks for cross-context comparison.

In Chapter 3, the study turns to the international landscape of climate resilience cooperation in developing countries. Using indices such as ND-GAIN and the World Bank's Adaptation and Resilience (A&R) Index, the analysis finds that climate vulnerability is most acute in low-income, fragile, and climate-exposed countries, where institutional capacity and governance constraints significantly limit resilience outcomes. A striking pattern is that many developing countries have made measurable progress in formulating climate adaptation plans and policies, yet continue to face significant gaps in implementation capacity, highlighting the need for ODA to move beyond policy support and strengthen the institutional and technical systems required for effective action.

International cooperation has increasingly focused on these high-risk contexts, with growing investments in sectors directly linked to climate adaptation, including agriculture, water, energy, and water and sanitation (WASH). Text analysis of OECD Creditor Reporting System (CRS) project descriptions reveals that two themes emerge as dominant in reported activities: food security and community-based climate adaptation on one hand, and institutional capacity and organizational resilience on the other. Donor approaches have also evolved toward more integrated and system-oriented strategies, combining infrastructure development with capacity building and institutional strengthening. At the same time, important limitations persist: clear and standardized resilience indicators are often absent, capacity-building efforts are rarely linked to measurable outcomes, and long-term impact monitoring remains weak across most donor programs.

Chapter 4 evaluates Korea's development cooperation practice through the lens of climate resilience. Statistical analysis of Korea's ODA portfolio from 2015 to 2024 shows that while climate-related (C) and resilience-related (R) projects have each expanded considerably, projects that explicitly address both dimensions together (CR projects) account for roughly one percent of total ODA by volume. KOICA and EDCF together implement the great majority of CR-coded projects, concentrated in environment, infrastructure, agriculture, water and sanitation, and health. At the strategic level, while 'climate change response' and 'green ODA' feature prominently in key policy documents, ‘resilience’ as a clearly defined and operationalized concept remains largely absent. This partly reflects insufficient recognition within Korea's development cooperation system of the urgency and centrality of climate resilience as a cross-cutting concern. Only four of 26 Country Partnership Strategies (CPS) systematically reflect a climate resilience perspective. This points to the need to reframe climate resilience not as a sub-category of climate adaptation, but as a core integrating framework for sustainable development.

Case study analysis of six representative projects—spanning health, agriculture, water and sanitation, infrastructure, and ecosystem restoration across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia—reveals a mixed picture. Positive examples exist: the Amazon health project explicitly defined climate resilience in its design rationale and applied WHO-based composite indicators to track resilience outcomes, while the Guatemala GCF project integrated ecological, economic, and social dimensions of resilience into its project logic. However, many projects continue to treat resilience as a label added onto conventional sector projects without meaningfully redefining the underlying project logic. Climate resilience is often absent from the problem analysis and logic model, and key assumptions in the PDM rarely reflect the climate risks and vulnerabilities that define the operating context. This is critical because projects targeting climate-exposed communities depend on well-specified assumptions about external conditions; when those conditions change, as they frequently do, only projects with adaptive management mechanisms built in are equipped to respond. The most pervasive weakness remains the absence of medium- and long-term outcome indicators, leaving results frameworks output-focused and ill-suited for tracking systemic resilience gains.

Chapter 5 synthesizes the study's findings and proposes an integrated analytical framework for climate resilience in development cooperation. The study argues that climate resilience is best understood along three defining axes: the subject of resilience (who or what must become more resilient), the object (resilience to what types of climate risks), and the means (how resilience capacities are built and strengthened). Subjects range from individuals and households through communities, national institutions, ecosystems, to interconnected socio-economic systems as a whole. Objects encompass acute climate shocks, such as floods and droughts, alongside chronic stressors like rising temperatures, groundwater depletion, and land degradation, as well as cascading indirect impacts such as food insecurity, disease outbreaks, displacement, and institutional failure. Means are organized along the well-established trajectory from anticipation and prevention, through absorptive and adaptive capacities, to long-run transformative change.

The chapter introduces a conceptual pathway model illustrating how the level of a society's climate resilience determines the development trajectory it follows after a climate shock. At the high-resilience end of the spectrum, a system experiences limited decline, recovers quickly, and ultimately reaches a higher developmental equilibrium than before. In contrast, systems with weak resilience may experience sharp and prolonged decline, permanent loss of previously achieved gains, or an inability to recover without major external intervention. This framing highlights that the goal of climate resilience programming in development cooperation is not simply to minimize damage, but to ensure that development gains are stable, durable, and capable of continuing to advance even in the face of recurring climate stress. The chapter further provides sector-specific guidance for agriculture, health, water and sanitation (WASH), and transport infrastructure.

The study concludes with policy recommendations at two levels. The most immediate priority at the policy and strategy level is to establish climate resilience as an explicit and operational objective. This should be reflected in Korea’s development cooperation strategies, sector guidelines, and country partnership strategies, supported by cross-agency coordination among KOICA, EDCF, and other relevant actors. At the project level, the study calls for a fundamental shift in how climate resilience is treated within the project cycle: from a label applied to titles and descriptions, to a design principle embedded throughout problem analysis, project logic and assumptions, and monitoring and evaluation systems. Ultimately, climate resilience should become not just the goal of select projects, but the operating logic of Korean development cooperation as a whole. It is an essential condition for delivering lasting, system-level impact in an era of accelerating climate risk.

국문요약

제1장 서론
1. 연구 배경과 필요성
2. 연구의 목적과 방법
3. 연구의 의의와 한계

제2장 기후 회복탄력성의 개념과 측정 방법
1. 회복탄력성에 대한 국제적 담론과 기후변화
2. 기후 회복탄력성 측정 방법에 대한 스코핑 리뷰
3. 소결

제3장 개발도상국의 기후 회복탄력성 강화를 위한 국제사회의 협력 현황과 시사점
1. 개발도상국의 기후 취약성과 회복탄력성
2. 공적개발원조(ODA)를 통한 협력 현황
3. 개발도상국의 기후 회복탄력성 강화를 위한 주요국의 접근 방식
4. 소결

제4장 기후 회복탄력성 강화를 위한 한국의 개발협력 현황과 과제
1. 한국의 기후 회복탄력성 ODA 추진 현황
2. 기후 회복탄력성 관련 한국의 개발협력 전략
3. 기후 회복탄력성 강화 사업 사례분석
4. 소결

제5장 결론 및 정책 시사점
1. 기후 회복탄력성의 개념과 분석 틀 제안
2. 정책 시사점

참고문헌

부록

Executive Summary