The Weekly: Alabama Used Five Financing Levers to Scale Resilient Building Standards Across the State
Alabama’s approach to scaling the FORTIFIED standard has become a blueprint nationwide.
Perspectives
33 articles
To Solve America’s Housing Crisis, We Need to Center Resilience
If we don’t build it right and build it to last, new housing supply won’t solve today’s housing crisis.
The Second Best Time to Invest in Resilience Is Right After a Disaster Hits
For most of the country, in most years, the post-disaster window is not the second-best time to invest in resilience. It is the only time anyone does.
The Missing Piece in LA's Wildfire Recovery Is Coordination
Three lessons from the Rebuilding with Resilience Summit
The Great Unlock
How public, private, and philanthropic leaders can scale the next chapter of climate resilience. A national call to action prepared for Chicago Climate Week and Aspen Ideas: Climate.
Financing the Missing Asset: Why Municipal Bonds Have Struggled to Finance Climate Resilience
Bespoke deals are too complex to scale. Broad “green” designations are too vague to measure. A middle route can fund adaptation at the pace climate risk demands.
Three Examples of How Incremental Change Led to Resilience
Early proof points are what eventually unlock scale, and they almost never look like proof when they begin. We need the compounding of resilience over time, and we need to recognize when the next disaster creates a narrow window for rapid investments in resilience—all at once.
Funding Climate Resilience is a Coordination Problem, Not a Capital Problem
Climate resilience is often framed as a problem of insufficient funding. In reality, it is a problem of how funding is structured and deployed.
How Incremental CRE Actions Add Up to Resilience
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.
Building Codes Can’t Keep Up With Climate Risk. Here’s How States Can Take Back Control.
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.
The Adaptation Economy Thesis
Four convictions drive an evolving investment thesis in the adaptation economy: 1) The adaptation economy is large and growing; 2) Resilience makes for more durable investments; 3) Investors see predictable growth and opportunity in the adaptation economy; 4) It’s still early and underserved.
The Federal Climate Retreat and Rise of a New Adaptation Ecosystem
The federal government's retreat from climate adaptation has created a gap in data, funding, and coordination, but a new decentralized ecosystem of nonprofits, state governments, and coalitions is stepping up to fill the void and may prove more resilient to political disruption in the long run.
Resilience Districts: Unlocking Tax-Increment Finance for Climate Adaptation
Resilience districts give local governments a new financing mechanism to fund climate adaptation, but their success depends on applying a forward-looking, risk-informed approach rather than defaulting to traditional bond financing logic.