Expression of Interest
Bring your boldest ideas to the Peru Resilience Hub at COP30
Deadline to submit: 15 September 2025
Location: COP30, 10–21 November 2025 | Blue Zone, Belém, Brazil
We are calling on all organisations, coalitions, businesses, creatives, and community groups to bring your boldest ideas to life at the Peru Resilience Hub at COP30. The Resilience Hub will feature curated sessions, hands-on workshops, peer-led dialogues, and artistic reflections that tackle the most pressing systemic blockers – and the most promising levers – for change.
This year’s programming is anchored in the Resilience Science Must-Knows, a science-based framework developed through global consultation to surface the most critical insights required to drive transformation. These insights have been distilled into six challenge tracks that shape our agenda in Belém and beyond.
Six challenges to unlock a resilient future
Act Early—Build Opportunity
Towards Thoughtfully Designed Transformations
Realigning Actions across Timescales, Mandates, and Funding Cycles
Redefining & Repricing Risk to Unlock Better Responses
Designing Systems for Agency and Equity
Bridging Climate, Nature, and Equity Goals
Act Early—Build Opportunity
1. Resilience Pays Off: Act Early – Build Opportunity
The science is clear: In the increasingly complex global risk landscape, resilience is no longer optional. Investing in resilience is not a sunk cost – it is a strategic move that safeguards development, protects future returns, and opens new opportunities. The evidence shows that delaying action increases long-term costs, deepens exposure, jeopardizing planetary and human security, and limits options. Whether through resilient infrastructure, diversified livelihoods, or early warning systems, building resilience helps governments, businesses, and communities avoid the escalating costs of disruption – and preserve their capacity to grow and adapt.
Despite this, resilience remains chronically underfunded. Many financing systems prioritize short-term outputs over longer-term risk reduction, creating structural disincentives to act early. This track explores how to realign those systems by embedding resilience into planning, budgeting, and investment frameworks. It brings forward tools in fiscal policy, public-private finance, and risk-sensitive budgeting that treat resilience not as a sunk cost but as a foundation for opportunity, competitiveness, and future readiness.
- How can ministries of finance, infrastructure authorities, and planning agencies embed resilience thinking and metrics into cost-benefit analyses and capital planning cycles to reflect long-term value? (e.g., incorporating avoided losses, lifecycle savings, and co-benefits into decisions on transport, energy, housing infrastructure, etc.)
- What fiscal or regulatory tools can national governments and central banks use to incentivize early-stage resilience investments? (e.g., resilience tax credits, budget tagging, or capital adequacy reforms that favor climate-smart infrastructure)
- How can development finance institutions, insurers, and philanthropic capital structure blend finance to de-risk and crowd in private investment for systemic resilience? (e.g., resilience-linked bonds, concessional co-investments, or public-private climate resilience funds)
- What investment models can align biodiversity restoration with livelihood generation and long-term risk reduction? (e.g., agroecology, blue carbon markets, or eco-tourism models that strengthen ecosystems and economic opportunity simultaneously)
- How can corporate actors – including agribusiness, financial institutions, and companies – quantify and invest in resilience as a strategic asset to reduce operational and supply chain risk? (e.g., through regenerative agriculture, climate-smart sourcing, or community-based ecosystem stewardship)
Supporting Must-Knows: (1), (3), (4)
Towards Thoughtfully Designed Transformations
2. Facing the Trade-Offs: Towards Thoughtfully Designed Transformations
Systemic transformation is essential for building resilient and just futures – but it always involves trade-offs. Whether in food systems, energy transitions, or governance reform, shifting away from harmful, unsustainable or unjust trajectories can create short-term costs or have unequal impacts on different livelihoods and society groups. These tensions are often overlooked, yet they shape whether transitions succeed – and for whom.
This track focuses on how public institutions, businesses, and communities can anticipate and manage the political, social, and ecological costs of change. It also calls for confronting “perverse resilience” – systems that remain robust but in ways that entrench inequality, degrade ecosystems, and suppress innovation. It invites scrutiny of trade-offs, sequencing, and safeguards in efforts to transform institutions, economies, or governance regimes that are resilient in the wrong ways. By planning for complexity rather than avoiding it, actors can design transitions that are not only ambitious, but realistic, legitimate, and built to endure.
Sessions in this track will explore key questions below (non-exhaustive list):
- How can public planning and regulatory bodies identify and disclose the social and ecological trade-offs embedded in major system transitions – and design safeguards to manage them? (e.g., ensuring that decarbonization strategies don’t marginalize rural communities or undermine food security)
- What institutional mechanisms or participatory processes can ensure that the sequencing of reforms – such as subsidy removals, governance shifts, or land-use changes – minimizes harm and distributes benefits as fairly as possible across groups and generations? (e.g., just transition frameworks, community-led impact assessments, adaptive policy phasing)
- In systems where perverse resilience persists, what structural levers can dismantle them without creating new vulnerabilities? (e.g., phasing out fossil fuel subsidies without compromising energy access or affordability)
- How can businesses and investors evaluate whether their sustainability strategies are shifting power, resources, or risks in ways that unintentionally entrench inequalities or undermine local agency? (e.g., using social risk indicators in ESG strategies or applying procedural justice criteria in climate-smart supply chains)
- How can insurers and reinsurers integrate social and ecological trade-offs into risk modelling and underwriting frameworks to avoid reinforcing systemic vulnerabilities?
Supporting Must-Knows: (1), (2), (7), (9)
Realigning Actions across Timescales, Mandates, and Funding Cycles
3. Mind the Misalignment Gap: Realigning Actions across Timescales, Mandates, and Funding Cycles
Effective resilience action depends on coordination across timeframes, mandates, and jurisdictions – yet these often remain out of sync. Political cycles operate on four- or five-year terms, while climate risks unfold over decades. Infrastructure is built for lifetimes, but investment planning is locked into short-term returns. Institutional mandates are often sector-bound, while real-world risks are cross-cutting. These mismatches – temporal, spatial, institutional, and financial – undermine the ability to plan for slow-onset threats, integrate across sectors, and invest in long-term risk reduction.
This track focuses on closing the misalignment gap. It explores how national and local governments, financial institutions, funders and implementing agencies can realign short-term decision cycles with the long-term nature of resilience-building. It invites examples of institutional innovation – such as adaptive planning models and feedback loops, resilience budget tagging, forward-compatible infrastructure design, and coordinated multi-level governance. Whether in urban planning, sovereign climate finance, or sectoral adaptation efforts, the goal is to enable systems that are flexible, anticipatory, and aligned across spatial and temporal scales.
Sessions in this track will explore key questions below (non-exhaustive list):
- How can national planning agencies and ministries of finance design funding mechanisms that match the longer time horizons of resilient infrastructure, ecosystems, and social systems? (e.g., climate budget tagging, adaptive public investment frameworks, or performance-based funding tied to resilience outcomes)
- What tools or governance models help align city-level adaptation plans with national strategies and financing pipelines? (e.g., vertical integration mechanisms, subnational climate investment platforms, or shared data frameworks for urban-rural coordination)
- How can public and private sector institutions design mandates and regulatory incentives that enable flexible, cross-sector action on slow-onset risks like drought, sea-level rise, or biodiversity loss? (e.g., multi-hazard risk registers, anticipatory finance mechanisms, or joint mandates across environment and finance ministries)
- Where are short-term budget or political cycles undermining long-term resilience investments, and how can feedback loops or institutional memory mechanisms reduce that risk? (e.g., multi-cycle investment planning, sunset clause reviews, or resilience stress testing in fiscal policy)
- How can grassroots organizations, Indigenous peoples, and frontline communities influence the design of adaptation plans to better reflect lived timelines and realities? (e.g., participatory planning mandates, community-led monitoring, or flexible grantmaking models that accommodate long-term local processes)
Supporting Must-Knows: (3), (4), (5), (7)
Redefining & Repricing Risk to Unlock Better Responses
4. Risk is Not What It Seems: Redefining & Repricing Risk to Unlock Better Responses
Risk is not neutral. This track interrogates how narratives, financial tools, and institutional priorities shape who is protected and who is left behind. From credit ratings and sovereign debt assessments to disaster planning and public risk registers, the ways we define and price risk have direct consequences for equity, agency, and long-term resilience. Risks that are real but hard to quantify – such as social exclusion, ecosystem collapse, or slow-onset climate impacts – are overlooked, while perceived or misunderstood risks, especially in climate-vulnerable countries or sectors, can lead to an inflated cost of capital. These distort insurance pricing, deter adaptation finance, and inflate the cost of long-term investment The track will explore how to reform risk tools and narratives to reflect a fuller spectrum of threats, reduce systemic bias, embed equity, and enable decisions that lower vulnerability rather than reproduce or exacerbate it.
Sessions in this track will explore key questions below (non-exhaustive list):
- How can ministries of finance, credit rating agencies, and multilateral lenders better incorporate long-term climate and social risks into sovereign risk assessments without penalizing countries investing in resilience? (e.g., adjusting debt sustainability analyses to reflect adaptation investments or using resilience-adjusted credit metrics)
- What reforms to risk models, insurance products, and disaster risk financing tools are needed to reflect the full spectrum of risks—especially those that are slow-onset, compounding, or socially embedded? (e.g., integrating data on ecosystem degradation, gendered vulnerability, or cascading supply chain risks into risk assessments)
- Where perceived risks are being overestimated in climate-vulnerable countries or sectors, how can insurers, investors, and DFIs correct these distortions to lower the cost of capital for resilience? (e.g., using blended finance or public guarantees to overcome perceived risk in smallholder agriculture or coastal infrastructure)
- How can public risk registers, early warning systems, and resilience metrics be redesigned to capture invisible or under-acknowledged risks, especially those faced by marginalized communities or informal sectors? (e.g., including social cohesion, informal safety nets, or indigenous early warning signals in national risk tracking systems)
- What role can philanthropy and development banks play in piloting alternative risk narratives and pricing tools that prioritize equity, justice, and adaptive capacity – rather than just economic exposure or insured loss? (e.g., supporting community-driven risk mapping or underwriting social infrastructure with long-term co-benefits
- What are promising models to embed intergenerational justice into how risk is priced, managed, and mitigated?
Supporting Must-Knows: (1), (3), (5), (9)
Designing Systems for Agency and Equity
5. More Than Inclusion: Designing Systems for Agency and Equity
Resilience strategies often emphasize participation, but true agency requires a shift in how power, value, and legitimacy are structured. This track explores how institutions across governance, finance, and planning can enable individual and collective agency in different forms by redistributing influence, recognizing diverse leadership, and resourcing locally led action.
A critical step is expanding how we define and work with value. Systems must acknowledge that resilience is built not only through financial capital, but through social cohesion, lived knowledge, ecological integrity, and cultural identity. Sessions will explore how to operationalize this diversity of capitals in decision-making, design, and funding mechanisms – from public investments and donor strategies to business models and data systems. Whether through participatory governance, co-created accountability tools, or community-owned metrics, this track highlights actionable strategies that embed agency, build trust, and enable lasting, just outcomes.
Sessions in this track will explore key questions below (non-exhaustive list):
- What institutional shifts or funding models are needed to legitimize and scale community-defined metrics of resilience success? (e.g., embedding locally led indicators into donor reporting, or funding platforms that validate diverse knowledge systems and success criteria)
- How can public institutions and donors design funding mechanisms that transfer decision-making power to local actors while maintaining transparency and accountability? (e.g., pooled resilience funds governed by local boards, simplified grantmaking for community groups, or participatory budgeting in climate planning)
- What governance models have successfully embedded Indigenous knowledge, informal institutions, or customary practices into formal adaptation strategies – and how can these models be scaled or adapted? (e.g., Indigenous guardianship of protected areas, recognition of traditional water management systems in national adaptation plans)
- How can development banks, companies, and governments better value and integrate non-financial forms of capital into resilience metrics, reporting, and investment decisions? (e.g., including social capital indicators in climate finance proposals, or valuing ecosystem stewardship in public-private partnerships)
- How can grassroots organizations and civil society strengthen their collective influence in shaping national and global adaptation priorities – beyond consultation – through formalized roles, mandates, or coalitions? (e.g., formal representation in NAP or GCF processes, or recognition of grassroots conveners in global adaptation mechanisms)
Supporting Must-Knows: (6), (7), (8), (9)
Bridging Climate, Nature, and Equity Goals
6. Solutions in Action: Bridging Climate, Nature, and Equity Goals
Meeting the scale of the society challenges posed by the climate and biodiversity crises requires both advancing new ideas and ensuring proven approaches take root. Building on the COP30 Presidency’s call for a “Granary of Solutions,” it focuses on solution approaches that connect agendas across climate, biodiversity, equity, and livelihoods, creating coherence that strengthens systems over time.
The track will explore how diverse knowledge systems – from ancestral practices and community governance to tech breakthroughs and AI – can be recombined to address complex risks. Importantly, resilience solutions are not necessarily based on completely novel or new elements. In fact, old (often marginalized) knowledge systems keep the memory of various resilience strategies that were used in the past and can set the foundation for current action. This track will highlight the novel ways in which solutions are successfully surfaced by recombining old and new elements. It will also consider the institutional structures, financing models, and collaborative platforms that help solutions scale, while staying grounded in local realities, inclusive, and capable of evolving with shifting conditions.
Sessions in this track will explore key questions below (non-exhaustive list):
- How do we broaden what counts and is funded as innovation in resilience, moving beyond technical breakthroughs to include social, institutional, and behavioral approaches? (e.g., elevating grassroots systems, traditional practices, or adaptive governance as innovations in their own right)
- How can solutions be designed to simultaneously advance climate, biodiversity, equity, and livelihood goals? (e.g., integrated land-use plans, nature-positive value chains, climate-smart agriculture)
- How can governments, development banks, and philanthropies shift financing models to support long-term implementation – not just early-stage innovation – in resilience? (e.g., outcome-linked funding, multi-year scaling grants, or pooled funds for proven nature-based and locally led solutions)
- How can innovation be enabled through the recombination of diverse knowledge systems, old and new elements, including traditional knowledge, local practice, and digital tools? (e.g., establishing protocols for co-design, ethical data sharing, or community-led digital adaptation platforms)
- What kinds of resilience strategies support psychological wellbeing and mental health, including responses to climate anxiety, eco-grief, and loss of cultural and ecological identity? (e.g., community-based healing, green social prescribing, or culturally rooted mental health interventions linked to nature connection)
Supporting Must-Knows: (4) (5), (6), (8), (9)
Submit your Expression of Interest
The Expression of Interest (EoI) is now open for a limited number of sessions that take these challenges head on and help shape the future of climate resilience.
What we’re looking for
The 2025 EOI process has been carefully designed to ensure focused, action-driven programming. We are seeking proposals that go beyond discussion and actively contribute to systemic change.
Your session must:
Respond to one of the six challenge tracks
Tracks are rooted in the Resilience Science Must-Knows and surfaced through consultations with real-economy actors.
Present a well-developed concept
We expect submissions to have a defined scope and format as well as a proposed speaker list.
Include at least one new co-organiser
This is an intentional request given our commitment to diversify engagement beyond the traditional stakeholders. List of previous hosts available here.
Reflect meaningful diversity
We want diverse speakers and perspectives across geography, sector, and lived experience.
Engage the audience interactively
Move beyond passive listening toward collaborative problem-solving, peer learning, or experimentation. Feel free to draw inspiration from our Tips and Tricks for Audience Engagement.
Avoid defaulting to panel formats
The Peru Resilience Hub will accept a maximum of 10 panel-style events. We encourage applicants to explore more interactive and innovative approaches with support from our Format Guidance Document to improve the opportunity for selection.
What makes a strong EoI?
1. Translate the Must-Knows into practice
Ground your session in one or more Must-Knows and make them tangible to a specific audience, sector, or system. These sessions are intended to help the broader climate community understand the significance and potential of the Must-Knows as a new resource to drive forward progress. Overview of the Must Knows available here.
2. Drive clarity and practical outcomes
Use your session to interrogate a real challenge, pressure-test an idea, or surface new solutions
3. Choose formats with purpose
Whether a high-level lab, community workshop, reverse panel, dialogue circle, or interactive installation—choose a delivery format that strengthens the message and supports meaningful exchange.
4. Broaden the network
We ask that each session include at least one new partner to avoid echo chambers and extend the Hub’s global reach. If you need matchmaking support, let us know.


Key Dates and process
EOI window: Open until 15 September 2025 (8 weeks)
We are offering an extended timeline to allow teams to coordinate meaningfully across institutions, refine concepts, and ensure sessions are thoughtfully co-designed. Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis.
We will not merge submissions without your consent
We commit to treating your idea with integrity. If you would like help connecting to potential collaborators, indicate this clearly in your submission and we will provide matchmaking support.
Interactive onboarding for shortlisted EOIs
All selected hosts will be invited to an orientation webinar to explore the Resilience Science Must-Knows with our expert team. This session will help refine your framing and finalize your proposed event.
How to Submit


- Review the six challenge tracks with guidance questions here.
- Consult our format guidance here.
- Review list of previous Resilience Hub hosts here to ensure that you have at least one new host. Indicate whether you are submitting as a finalised group or would like help finding collaborators.
- Complete the Google form by 15 September via this link.
- Make sure to use our standard template when submitting your concept note.
- Refer to our handy FAQ guide if needed.
If you still have a question or need help with your submission please reach out to a member of the Resilience Hub team at info@cop-resilience-hub.org who will be happy to assist you.
Help build the future of resilience at COP30
The Peru Resilience Hub is more than a space—it’s a community of practice grounded in science and driven by action. This is your opportunity to shape the conversations, collaborations, and solutions that the world needs now.
We look forward to seeing your ideas take shape.