Financing Systemic Climate Resilience
How can climate finance promote climate resilience?
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As climate change impacts become more apparent, the need for systemic climate resilience becomes clearer. Focusing the climate resilience of specific assets or businesses alone is not sufficient. Entire systems of production and critical infrastructure networks need to be made climate resilient. How can the financing be provided that is necessary for this?
This panel, hosted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) during November 2021's COP26, explores views and needs from different key stakeholders across public and private industries, with particular emphasis on the role of Multilateral Development Banks and global initiatives to advance practical solutions.
About the EBRD
The EBRD is an international financial institution that supports projects from central Europe to central Asia, including the following EEA member and cooperating countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey. The EBRD is owned by 63 countries, the EU and the European Investment Bank.
Many of the countries in which the EBRD operates are particularly vulnerable to climate change. This is in part because of their geographical location and characteristics, but also a consequence of historic under-investment, which has resulted in aging infrastructure and facilities that are less able to withstand changes in climatic conditions.
The bank fosters transition towards open and democratic market economies through investment and technical cooperation. The Bank invests primarily in private sector clients whose needs cannot be fully met by the market, by providing loans, equity participation and guarantees to companies of all sizes and in a wide range of sectors.
The EBRD supports its clients in identifying those climate change impacts that are likely to affect their operations. This is expected to lead to the formulation of adaptation strategies that increase resilience through improved practices, and investments in measures and technologies that are better suited to a changing and more variable climate, and which reduce long-term risk.
The EBRD’s work on climate change adaptation reaches many sectors of the economy, such as water supplies, hydropower generation, coastal infrastructure and water-intensive industries such as agribusiness and mining. Investments in making these sectors climate resilient can help businesses to reduce costs and increase competitiveness over the lifetime of the projects and avoid stranded assets.
