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ESG, Climate & Sustainable Finance — Country-Level Data

Country-level and sovereign data on ESG performance, climate adaptation, and governance frameworks.

Sovereign ESG & Governance

  • World Bank Sovereign ESG Data Portal CSV Global — 71+ ESG indicators across 217 economies spanning 60 years, covering all 17 Sustainable Development Goals across environment, social, and governance pillars. Includes interactive score builder, income adjustment tool, and peer comparisons. Bulk download available via the Data Catalog. CC BY 4.0 license.
  • ECGI Corporate Governance Codes Global — Free database of corporate governance codes, principles, and reforms from dozens of countries, maintained by the European Corporate Governance Institute. Documents downloadable as PDF. Includes monitoring reports and impact studies where available.

Governance & Institutional Quality

  • V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) CSV Global — 500+ indicators on democracy, governance, political institutions, and human rights for 202 countries from 1789 to present. Covers electoral democracy, liberal component, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian dimensions. Free CSV download via the V-Dem Dataset page. Widely used in political economy and institutional finance research. Also accessible via the vdemdata R package.
  • Fragile States Index CSV Global — Annual country-level fragility scores across 12 indicators (security apparatus, group grievance, economic decline, human flight, state legitimacy, public services, human rights, demographic pressures, refugees, external intervention, and two cohesion indicators) for 179 countries, 2006–present. By the Fund for Peace. Downloadable as Excel. Useful for research on sovereign risk, institutional quality, and investment climate.
  • UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset CSV Global — Country-level and dyadic armed conflict data covering conflict type, intensity, parties, and geographic location from 1946 to present. By Uppsala University (UCDP) and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). Free CSV download. The standard dataset for political risk and conflict research in economics and finance.

Climate Adaptation

  • FAOSTAT Temperature Change CSV Global — Annual surface temperature change by country relative to the 1951–1980 baseline, from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Covers 200+ countries and territories from 1961 to present, with breakdowns by meteorological divisions. Free bulk download as CSV via FAOSTAT. Also accessible in Python via the faostat package.
pip install faostat
  • ND-GAIN Country Index CSV Global — Annual country-level scores measuring vulnerability to climate change and readiness to adapt, from the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative. Covers 182 countries from 1995 to present. Vulnerability is assessed across six life-supporting sectors (food, water, health, ecosystem services, human habitat, and infrastructure); readiness captures economic, governance, and social capacity to leverage investments for adaptation. Data downloadable as CSV. Widely used in research on climate finance, sovereign risk, and ESG investing.

See also: Firm-Level ESG Data for company-level ratings, emissions, and climate risk measures | Macroeconomic & Country-Level Data for broader sovereign indicators | EDGAR Emissions Database for country-level greenhouse gas data.