Expression of Interest

1. Resilience Pays Off: Act Early – Build Opportunity

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 is clear: delaying action increases long-term costs, deepens exposure, 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 long-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.

Sessions in this track will explore key questions below (non-exhaustive list):

1. How can ministries of finance, infrastructure authorities, and planning agencies embed resilience 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.)
2. 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)
3. How can development finance institutions, insurers, and philanthropic capital structure blended 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)
4. 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)
5. How can corporate actors – including agribusiness, financial institutions, and natural resource 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)

2. Facing the Trade-Offs: Designing Transformations That Work for All

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 systems can create short-term costs, disrupt livelihoods, or challenge existing safety nets. 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 fair, legitimate, and built to endure.

Sessions in this track will explore key questions below (non-exhaustive list): 

1. 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)
2. 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 fairly across groups and generations?  (e.g., just transition frameworks, community-led impact assessments, adaptive policy phasing)
3. 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)
4. 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)
5. 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)

3. Mind the Misalignment Gap: Realigning 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, 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, and implementing agencies can realign short-term decision cycles with the long-term nature of resilience-building. It invites examples of institutional innovation – from adaptive planning models and feedback loops, to 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 scale.

Sessions in this track will explore key questions below (non-exhaustive list): 

1. 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)
2. 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)
3. 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)
4. 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)
5. 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)

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 often 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 it.

Sessions in this track will explore key questions below (non-exhaustive list): 

1. 1. 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)
   2. 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)
   3. 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)
   4. 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)
   5. 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)

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 center individual and collective agency 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): 

1. 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) 
2. 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)
3. 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)
4. 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)
5. 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)

6. Solutions with Staying Power: Scaling Resilience through Coherence, Cognition, and Diversity

Lasting resilience is built through consistent practice, not novelty alone. This track explores how to identify and scale solutions that endure – those that bridge agendas, adapt across contexts, and embed themselves in systems over time. As calls for innovation grow, too many efforts chase “breakthroughs” while sidestepping the persistent, essential work of implementation. Resilience requires coherence across climate, biodiversity, equity, and economic goals – and a commitment to scaling what already works, not just what’s new.

This track will examine how diverse knowledge systems – from ancestral practices to behavioral science and AI – can be recombined to address today’s complex risks. It will spotlight how institutions can support uptake and long-term consistency, rather than relying on isolated pilots (which still play a legitimate role in experimentation). It also underscores the importance of diversity in actors, approaches, and contexts, recognizing that solutions rooted in local realities, lived experience, and cultural insight are more likely to stick. From nature-based solutions to digital tools, it invites strategies for embedding resilience in ways that are durable, adaptive, and widely adopted.

Sessions in this track will explore key questions below (non-exhaustive list): 

1. 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)
2. 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)
3. How can innovation be enabled through the recombination of diverse knowledge systems, including traditional knowledge, local practice, and digital tools?  (e.g., establishing protocols for co-design, ethical data sharing, or community-led digital adaptation platforms)
4. What institutional structures help align and scale solutions that bridge climate, biodiversity, and equity goals simultaneously?  (e.g., cross-sector coordination platforms, joint investment strategies, or shared performance metrics across ministries and sectors)
5. 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)