National development pathways shape climate stress at cultural world heritage sites globally

Climate change increasingly threatens cultural World Heritage sites globally, yet how national development pathways relate to changes in this stress remains unclear. Here we present the Global Heritage Adaptation Portfolio Framework (GHAPF), linking changes in climate-induced stress at 938 cultural World Heritage sites to multidomain national development patterns. Using a two-stage analysis that combines climate material exposure thresholds with interpretable machine learning on World Development Indicators from 1995–2020, we find that the modelled net association is skewed toward lower predicted stress by about one third. Health, social protection, labor participation, and governance are most consistently associated with lower predicted stress. Low- and middle-income countries show broader but smaller average contributions across domains, whereas high-income countries show larger average contributions concentrated in fewer domains. GHAPF is a transferable macro-scale screening framework that can inform national adaptation planning while complementing site-specific preventive conservation, especially where direct heritage investment is limited.