Confronting the Resilience Elephant:
From Science to Solutions

Session Overview

As climate risks intensify and social systems strain, it’s time to ask: do our resilience strategies hold up under pressure, deliver over time, and reach those who need them most?

This flagship session builds on momentum from London Climate Action Week, where the Resilience Science Must-Knows were soft-launched and stress-tested with leaders from policy, business, and civil society. At Climate Week NYC, we move from insight to interrogation  – putting real-world strategies under the microscope through expert provocations (“Elephants”) and collaborative remix labs. The outcomes will feed directly into COP30 in Belém, contributing to the COP30 Presidency’s Granary of Solutions and the broader global resilience agenda.

Problem at Hand

As climate risk escalates, resilience strategies are multiplying, but coherence is not. Too many solutions remain siloed, fragmented, or unfit for long-term uncertainty. The challenge now is not just to scale activity, but to scale what works: strategies that are inclusive, adaptive, and built for complexity. This session asks what it would really take to shift from narrative to nuance—and from concept to capacity—using a solid evidence base based on the Resilience Science Must-Knows.

Format & Participation

This three-hour session is made from fast-paced sprints designed to provoke, engage, and co-create. We’ll move from scene-setting lightning talks into live critiques of three real-world cases. These structured conversations will set the stage for remix labs where participants co-design stronger, more resilient approaches.

Participants are invited to a coffee mixer  a chef-led lunch experience, developed with a local, sustainability-driven culinary network. These are intentionally curated to highlight often-overlooked dimensions of resilience: food systems, cultural memory, and emotional connection.

Participants will:

• Interrogate three case studies from diverse sectors (e.g. insurance, NbS, infrastructure, grassroots organizing, and more)
• Surface key mindset shifts and systemic tensions that must be addressed for truly transformative action
• Hear incisive critiques from the “Elephants”
• Co-create remix strategies that respond to real constraints and deepen alignment with resilience science
• Reflect on the cultural and emotional layers of resilience through the chef-led lunch collaboration

Audience:

This session is designed for cross-sector leaders: business strategists, investors, planners, donors, city officials, grassroots organizers, technical experts, and policymakers. Whether you’re funding solutions, implementing them, or advocating for better ones, this is where resilience gets tested and reimagined.

Session Overview

Despite mounting risks to global financial systems, supply chains, and frontline communities, only a fraction of climate finance currently flows to adaptation and resilience. The private sector is beginning to respond to this gap, integrating climate risks into portfolios, developing new instruments, and mobilizing capital at scale. Yet without stronger links to inclusive financial ecosystems, these innovations often fall short of reaching the communities most exposed to climate shocks.

Building on insights from London Climate Action Week and looking ahead to COP30, this session explores how local financial ecosystems—from microfinance institutions to municipal financing systems—can become central to the future of adaptation finance. It examines how highly concessional finance, National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), donor partnerships, and innovative instruments can unlock their potential.

Anchored in the Resilience Science Must-Knows, the conversation will identify ways to scale solutions that foster anticipatory capacity and distributed agency. This session seeks to align incentives, connect innovations, and co-create financial systems that are inclusive, resilient, and fit for a volatile future.

Problem at hand

Finance is more than capital: it shapes power, risk, and opportunity. Financial systems must be investable and inclusive to facilitate resilience. They must be able to respond to diverse local realities while attracting risk-tolerant capital. This session explores how finance architectures can evolve and how new coalitions can form to deliver on that dual imperative. 

Format & Participation

This session blends sharp insight with active exchange under the Chatham House Rule to encourage honest reflection and genuine collaboration. It features provocations across the finance ecosystem followed by a dynamic, participatory dialogue. Graphic facilitation will capture key takeaways, with a curated coffee mixer following for continued conversation and connection.

Participants will:

• Test how concessional finance can catalyze private capital while enhancing inclusivity.
• Identify practical levers for system-building.
• Surface actionable ideas and partnerships for scaling resilient financial ecosystems.
• Contribute to evolving guidance on inclusive adaptation finance under the Global Goal on Adaptation.

Audience:

This session is for those shaping and delivering adaptation finance at any scale, including representatives from ministries of finance, local governments, development banks, microfinance institutions, investors, philanthropy, fintech, grassroots organizations, and corporations with local value chains. Whether you bring capital, policy, or practice, your perspective is essential in co-creating finance that works from the ground up.

Session Overview

As the frequency and severity of extreme climate events rise, so do their ripple effects across infrastructure, health systems, and the fabric of communities. These disruptions are no longer isolated crises. They are becoming compounding shocks that erode trust, fracture systems, and leave long shadows on physical and mental health.

This session explores what it takes to build resilience across three dimensions: physical infrastructure, social preparedness, and human health and mental well-being. It draws from real-world experiences and cross-sector expertise to examine what works and what needs to change for long-term systemic transformation. 

Building on discussions from London Climate Action Week and looking ahead to COP30, this session connects climate science with practice. It aligns with the COP30 Presidency’s call to “ensure the protection of people’s lives and health” and aims to translate that ambition into grounded, actionable pathways.

Problem at Hand

Resilience efforts remain reactive, siloed, or overly technical. They fail to account for the layered, cascading impacts climate shocks have on people and systems. This session tackles the critical question on how to prepare for cascading impacts before they happen. It also calls on participants to reflect on recovery pathways that strengthen—not just restore—the systems that keep people safe, connected, and cared for.

Format & Participation

This session will feature sharp, grounded inputs from speakers working at the intersection of infrastructure, public health, and social response to extreme events. Speakers will examine focused cases, such as hospital system failures during climate hazards, community-led cooling networks, or the mental health impacts of displacement. This session will highlight what preparedness and recovery should look like and reflect on the challenges and opportunities from real-world examples.

Participants Will:

• Examine real-world cases of system breakdown and recovery across health, infrastructure, and social support.
• Surface the invisible health and mental health impacts that follow extreme weather events
• Explore interdependencies between sectors and co-develop strategies that strengthen systemic resilience
• Identify practical actions that embed long-term preparedness and equitable recovery into local and national policy
• Reflect on how trauma, trust, and care can shape recovery trajectories

Audience:

This session is designed for public health leaders, emergency planners, city officials, infrastructure specialists, social service providers, humanitarian responders, and community organizers. It will also engage funders, donors, and private-sector actors interested in building shock-ready, people-centered systems.

Information for this exciting launch is coming soon.