Incrementalism is often dismissed as not scalable enough to translate into population-level outcomes. But a series of incremental changes, conducted by various stakeholders in concert, can translate into new norms, higher standards, and more resilient cities.
The concept of adaptive capacity reveals that a household's ability to respond matters as much as its exposure.
As climate-driven hazards accelerate, a dangerous structural misalignment has emerged: What building codes deem legally permissible to construct is increasingly at odds with what catastrophic risk models deem financially viable to insure.
Incrementalism is often dismissed as not scalable enough to translate into population-level outcomes. But a series of incremental changes, conducted by various stakeholders in concert, can translate into new norms, higher standards, and more resilient cities.
By Abby Ross, Contributing Author for The Epicenter and CEO / Founder of The Resiliency Company
Most organizations working on climate resilience have a good idea of what needs to happen. The harder question is how.
Last year, The Resiliency Company created a playbook for commercial real estate. From Vulnerability to Value, A Risk Mitigation Playbook to Drive Resilient Development is designed to show how the ecosystem of stakeholders in the sector—such as lenders, investors, developers, owners, designers, contractors, and insurers—can work in coordination to reduce weather-related risk and unlock new value.
We took an early draft to an event at Climate Week NY in 2025 to get feedback from industry leaders. Everyone was in alignment with the premise and utility of the playbook and acknowledged that the industry already has the knowledge, technology, and standards for risk reduction.
However, when we broke out into groups to explore how to actually operationalize the playbook in the context of the various stakeholder silos, the realities and obstacles to change became very real. Participants expressed the challenges of people not wanting to break out of what they currently do. I watched as people who were bought in on the concepts wrestled with the implementation and justification of how to directly attribute ROI.
It makes sense. We’ve built our current operating and investing models on assumptions and dynamics that, for many years, we haven’t had to revisit. America's infrastructure was built during a period of relative climate stability—when weather could be treated as a constant.
However, that’s no longer true. Now, owners, investors, developers, architects, and others in the commercial real estate development space need to rethink how projects get financed, how risk gets priced and allocated, and how building codes accommodate the next decades of extreme weather. As they say, what got us here won’t get us there.
In the executive summary of the Risk Mitigation Playbook, we wrote, “The time for incremental change has passed. Success demands decisive, collaborative action across the entire CRE ecosystem.”
Those words were intended to spark action—more rallying cry than nuanced analysis. As time has passed, I’ve come to disagree. Yes, we’re seeing a meteoric increase in the number of billion-dollar disasters in the United States. Yes, investing and building with resilience is a strategic imperative. Yes, we need to move quickly.
But what we need more is the broad adoption of incremental change. Incrementalism is often dismissed as not scalable enough to translate into population-level outcomes. But a series of incremental changes, conducted by various stakeholders in concert, can translate into new norms, higher standards, and more resilient cities.
Changing an RFP process to reward resilience or aligning beneficiaries in the predevelopment phase of a project isn’t going to earn headlines. But they represent the kind of incremental steps necessary for future progress.
Below, I want to point out several opportunities for incremental change in the CRE ecosystem. Each one, by itself, might not amount to much, but when they’re stacked on top of each other, the results can be remarkable.
In commercial real estate, the people with the most influence over a project's risk profile are rarely the ones who ultimately bear that risk. Developers make the decisions that determine how much a building can withstand, and then hand it off. Lenders underwrite the asset and then exit. Contractors build to spec and move to the next project. The risk ultimately lands with owners, insurers, and communities. Incremental steps matter because they can shift behavior for each stakeholder, without waiting for the whole system to realign.
Drawing from our Playbook, I’ve highlighted several opportunities for incremental improvements for different stakeholders in the CRE ecosystem.
Lenders shape which projects get built and on what terms, but they rarely hold risk long enough to feel the consequences. Small changes can close that gap.
Investors set the financial assumptions that flow through the rest of the deal: pro forma, IC memo, hold period, and exit cap. One changed assumption on one deal can reshape what the IC approves.
The developer has the greatest influence over pre-development decisions and the least exposure to their long-term consequences. A small change on their part can transfer less risk to the future owner, the insurer, and the lender.
The decisions design teams make in the first few months of a project drive most of a building’s lifetime risk.
Contractors typically weigh in last on resilience decisions and absorb the consequences first when those decisions don’t account for actual site conditions.
Insurers have a simpler job than they think: signal that resilience matters, and show what it does to coverage.
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None of these changes requires coordination across the value chain to take effect. Each action works on its own, and when enough actors make enough small moves, the cumulative effect can become a new standard of practice.
Pre-development is where leverage is highest. This is why Shalini Vajjhala and Caroline George, leaders at PRE Collective, argue in a recent Insurance for Good blog post, “Why Resilience Finance Starts with Predevelopment,” that “In many ways, the business case for resilience looks more like preventative healthcare or early childhood education than traditional capital planning or infrastructure finance. Early action creates the greatest value.” Incremental change isn’t flashy. It flies below the radar. But it’s also where we need to start.
Have thoughts to share on this piece, or want to add your voice to the conversation? Reach out!
The concept of adaptive capacity reveals that a household's ability to respond matters as much as its exposure.
As climate-driven hazards accelerate, a dangerous structural misalignment has emerged: What building codes deem legally permissible to construct is increasingly at odds with what catastrophic risk models deem financially viable to insure.
As long as building codes lag behind climate realities, private insurance markets will continue to dictate local safety standards by default. Resiliency Codes offer a clear, actionable strategy to change this dynamic.
Cool roofs, permeable paving, green stormwater infrastructure, and strategic tree planting have all proven to reduce heat and flooding.
