Historically, efforts to mitigate climate change have taken precedence over building resilience to its impacts. But from Pakistan to the Amazon, communities on the front lines are already experiencing the devastating effects of a warming world.

In recent weeks, devastating floods have claimed the lives of over 450 people in East Africa, as heavy rains linked to El Niño and changing climate patterns overwhelmed communities and infrastructure. Similar tragedies unfolding in Brazil, Pakistan, and Afghanistan underscore the human cost of being unequipped to protect against the worst impacts of climate change.

As these impacts are increasingly felt across the globe, the focus on investing in climate resilience is gaining attention. It is increasingly clear that without far greater investments in resilience, efforts to address climate change could be outpaced by accelerating climate risks.

The third annual Innovations in Climate Resilience Conference (ICR24)—hosted by Battelle in partnership with the Wilson Center—highlighted this need for resilience investments alongside mitigation efforts, convening leading voices in policy, academia, and government, as well as researchers and practitioners who are pioneering innovative solutions to the consequences of a warming world.

Below, we distill eight key takeaways that emerged from expert remarks shared at the conference:

1. Disparities and inequities in climate responses can erode the gains we would otherwise make with sound policy and investment. 

Dr. Ben Vinson III, President of Howard University: “We [Howard University] believe innovative research in climate resilience and mitigation must be paired with environmental justice. One does not fully exist without the other. This is because disparities and inequities can potentially erode some of the gains that are made in advances as we move ahead in the world of climate science. And more importantly, these same disparities and inequities can also impact the application of the advances that we make.”

Dr. Geri Richmond, Undersecretary for Science and Innovation, US Department of Energy: “Right now, as we face extreme heat events, wildfires and hurricanes, the whole point [of our urban integrated field laboratories] is to bring more resources to parts of the country that otherwise might have been left behind. Something that we think about all the time at the Department of Energy is how we can reach them and how we can reshape the way we look at the climate crisis and invest in our communities. In fact, President Biden’s Justice40 executive order requires that at least 40% of certain federal investments go directly to underserved communities.”

Kenneth Høegh, Head of Representation, Government of Greenland to the US and Canada: “In international research in Greenland, we need a close interaction between the local society, the local businesses, the environment, the culture, and international scientists. Foreign scientists [working in Greenland] are getting better and better at using the local community for support…But all this must be done by creating a framework for cooperation between the public and private sectors. For research to be understandable and useful for our local community, it’s science must be accessible to everyone.” 

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2. Preparedness pays. Adaptation and resilience measures are critical elements of creating a truly competitive and resilient economy.

Sarah Ladislaw, Senior Director for Climate and Energy, National Security Council: “There is no economic resilience without climate resilience. As the impacts of long-term climate change continue to rise, investment and adaptation will have outsized benefits. Effective inclusive investment and climate adaptation can minimize the impacts of climate change and, in some cases, even prevent them. Every one dollar invested in climate adaptation yields two to ten dollars in economic benefits.”

Dr. Annalise Blum, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, Department of the Interior: “We know that one of the ways that we are most impacted by climate change is through water. Water is key to addressing climate change challenges and building resilience…So the Bureau of Reclamation is also working on water conservation projects, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the Inflation Reduction Act. We are providing historic investments, enabling this work through funding for Water Smart Projects, which are expected to conserve more than 100,000-acre feet of water per year. In many cases, we need to update old infrastructure to become more resilient.”

LISTEN | New Security Broadcast | Sarah Ladislaw on US Climate Security and “Mutually Assured Resilience”

3. The tide is shifting in terms of public and private sector investments in adaptation. Now is the time to “crowd-in” investments for climate resilience.

Dina Esposito, Assistant to the Administrator, Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security, US Agency for International Development (USAID): “For a long time, when you talked about climate finance for adaptation globally, the words you would hear most often were things like: ‘overlooked’ and ‘underfunded’. But the tide is starting to shift both in terms of public and private sector investments in adaptation…Our adaptation investments are intentionally designed to crowd in private sector funding to create these win-win solutions for people and the planet.”

Kelly Cummins, Acting Director, Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, US Department of Energy: “Not all of our projects are going to be successful—there will be a certain portion that are discontinued. But that is okay because that is why the government is involved—to go where the private sector alone is not yet willing to go. We are going to learn from all of our projects, whether they’re successful or unsuccessful. And we’re going to help inform additional private sector investment with those learnings.” 

Dina Esposito, USAID: “We see our job as both derisking private sector investments as well as working with governments to design resilience projects with openness, transparency, and community buy-in–because doing so is both better for communities and, in the end, is going to be far less risky for investors.”

Ali Zaidi, National Climate Advisor: “While attacking the root cause of the climate crisis, the GHGs that go into the atmosphere, is important, in equal measure, it’s important for us to strengthen resilience here and all around the world. I hope that many of you join us in the PREPARE initiative, which is designed to pull in the private sector as our partner in deploying resilience and adaptation around the world.”

READ | A Climate Finance Rethink Can Help Those Most Impacted by Climate Change

4. We need broad access to accurate and timely information about weather and climate patterns. Extreme weather prediction, early warning systems, and our understanding of the impacts of a warming world are only as good as the information and data that they are based on.

Dina Esposito, USAID: “Consider the power of information for a community facing the arrival of a storm or heat wave. Just a 24-hour warning of an impending weather emergency can cut weather-related damages by 30%. And yet one-third of the world’s population and nearly 60% of people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to these systems.”

Dr. Richard Spinrad, Administrator, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: “Our job is to help people understand climate change, but also to be able to collect the data develop what I call environmental intelligence to support decision-making—the contribution to decisions that have to be made at every level, from the individual and local to the regional, state, and national. We now have the capability to track, anticipate, and respond with much greater accuracy, speed, and skill to a number of issues. And this only happens because we have a number of innovations that we can tie into our abilities.”

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5. There is no one size fits all approach for climate resilience. Climate change may be a global problem, but the specificity of how it impacts geographies and contexts is varied and innovation must be informed by local lived experiences. 

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Senior Advisor, Akin Gump, Member of Congress 1989 – 2019: “I think of cities that I represented, like Miami Beach, like the city of Miami, they’re leading efforts in a lot of the solutions. There’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. What can be a success in one area may not be a success because of the terrain in another area.”

Dr. Geri Richmond, US Department of Energy: “It’s important for us, as we’re thinking of solutions, that we’re working closely with our communities before we come in and say, ‘we think we know how to fix it.’ Communication is about listening. It’s about listening and then working with people to help them with the unique needs that they have.”

Dina Esposito, USAID: “We know that real progress is possible—we see it in our own countries and in the places where we work. But accelerating the pace of change and unleashing the full potential of solutions that benefit both people and planet will mean breaking down our own silos and institutional barriers—between sectors; between research and implementation; between international and local. Sometimes we need to bring very different people and skillsets together to bridge the gap between what’s possible technologically and what’s desirable and achievable locally.

READ | Climate Solutions from the Ground Up: The Importance of Place-Based Approaches

6. We need to train a workforce today to prepare for tomorrow’s climate challenges.

Ali Zaidi, National Climate Advisor: “The work of resilience is severely constrained, either today or in the future, by our limited ability to train up the workforce that’s necessary to do it. This has not been a field per se for decades. It’s an emerging field. And there’s appetite, especially among young people, to step into resilience careers, but I don’t think our workforce training pipelines are set up to harness that excitement. And I don’t think we are sourcing the workforce that we need, that’s as well-adapted to the new techniques and the new interventions that need to be built out, and that are going to be necessary at the scale and speed of deployment that’s necessary in the face of this crisis.”

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7. A global problem requires global cooperation.

Sarah Ladislaw, National Security Council: “This year, climate finance will continue to be a major issue for us to address at venues like the G20, the ongoing World Bank evolution process, and the renewed UNFCCC climate finance commitments. In each of these conversations, we need to work together to ensure that adaptation and resilience measures are recognized by policymakers, international financial institutions, and investors as critical elements of creating a truly competitive and resilient economy. Through a combination of the right information, incentives, and policy structure, countries can create competitive and effective adaptation programs that increase the flow of capital markets and resources at scale.

Dina Esposito, USAID: “We’ve seen the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act with an investment of over $360 billion dollars in the transition to a clean energy economy. This is the single largest investment in climate and energy ever, and one that independent experts say could halve America’s emissions this decade. All of us together, across nations and across the public and private sectors, need to bring this same ingenuity, urgency, and increased investment abroad if we are to scale solutions and truly address a crisis that knows no borders.”

Maria Viotti, Brazilian Ambassador to the United States: “Brazil’s presidency has created a G20 Task Force for Global Mobilization Against Climate Change, bringing together for the first time the sherpa and the finance tracks around the planners’ agenda. Its main role is to adopt an innovations agenda for the 1.5C goal with a coordinated approach based on practical, robust, and just national transition plans and stronger engagement of the financial sector.”

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8. True innovation lies in the process we go through to get the work done and to get the basics right.

Dr. Aaron Salzberg, Director of the Water Institute, University of North Carolina (UNC); Global Fellow, Wilson Center: “What I want to caution against is innovating our way out of climate change conversations or climate change. Most of the infrastructure failures that we see in the water world, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, are not because of extreme weather events but because these systems are not designed, built, operated, or maintained properly. Certainly, systems do fail under extreme events. But these are rare compared to the day-to-day failures that we see. We just don’t get the basics and the fundamentals right. And this is where, ironically, real resilience happens.”

Dr. Annalise Blum, Department of the Interior: “At the Department of the Interior, we’re focused on “unleashing the science,” which is a charge from Secretary Haaland to ensure that science is being shared to help all of us make the best decisions for our planet now and in the future…And so, I think one example of work USGS has done is trying to blend the importance of science and working closely with local communities to make sure that we’re implementing policies in a way that is resilient and appropriate to local contexts.”

Sharon Burke, President of Ecospherics; Global Fellow, Wilson Center: “When we talk about basics and breakthroughs on this foundation of resilience, there’s a fundamental problem there, which is with the concept of resilience. We don’t even have the language we need because ‘resilience,’ of course, implies snapping back to the status quo, that we can somehow make these phenomenal changes and innovate our way out of them and come back. And I think we all know that that’s not the right concept anymore…

“We’re in a fundamentally unsafe, unsteady time right now. How do we go forward from here? ‘Resilience’ won’t do, but ‘progress’ won’t either, because progress has gotten us where we are. So, we need a new concept, a new driver, a new ‘pro’ word that that isn’t ‘procrastinate.’ So, something that our community has to come up with is a whole new language. And there are three ways that we do that, and they involve information, innovation, and implementation…

“We need better information, better innovation, better governance, better implementation, and we need them all to be connected, and we need them to be bigger at a systems level…We need to be able to look at how all these things work together as complex systems and govern to that. And it’s not how we’re set up.”

Dr. Aaron Salzberg, UNC and Wilson Center: “What makes innovation so important is not just the solutions we develop, but also the process that we go through in developing those solutions, and what we can learn about ourselves and our relationships through that process. This process of data collection and analysis and jointly iterating and refining potential solutions—all within this context in which these solutions must be applied—that really builds the skills that we all need to rapidly adapt to changing environmental conditions.”  

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