The Race to Resilience was launched in January 2021 at the Climate Adaptation Summit to mobilize non state actors to take action on building the resilience of vulnerable communities to climate change by 2030. The campaign now has 33 Partners, representing over 2,500 NSA organisations, taking action in over 100 countries.
At COP26, the campaign will announce new Partners that will deliver resilience transformations: stand alone actions that advance the campaign’s mission, focused on making significant and innovative changes in the systems we currently operate in..
About the partners and their solutions:
BFA Global – Digital Finance for Climate Resilience (DF4CR)
Millions of people around the world are already experiencing the negative effects of climate change, which are concentrated among those who are dependent on natural resources, the poor and vulnerable, and those in particular geographies, like urban settlements and coastal regions. Unfortunately, many of these exposed populations lack access to solutions and resources, like financial services, that can help mitigate their greater exposure to the negative impacts of climate change and enable them to participate in the climate transition. While this imbalance is troubling, technological advances and increased reach of digital services offer an opportunity for climate resilience solutions to help vulnerable people anticipate, adapt, and build resilience to the physical impacts of climate change. Even as access to resilience solutions lags, digital finance innovations have been able to reach many climate vulnerable populations.
To understand the opportunity for digital finance and fintech to power greater climate resilience, BFA Global convened a Task Force of climate and financial service experts, including World Resources Institute, CGAP, PayPal, and the team of the UN Race to Resilience campaign. Together, the Task Force developed a Digital Finance for Climate Resilience (DF4CR) solutions map to provide an actionable way for stakeholders to understand the DF4CR opportunity and the concrete solutions that can grow climate resilience among vulnerable people in emerging markets. Additionally, the DF4CR Task Force has held three closed-door roundtables with 40+ stakeholders from around the world to co-develop a Framework for Action, to be released at COP26, to inform how this emerging ecosystem can transition into a frenzy of activity by the end of 2023.
Climate-KIC – Adaptation Clusters
Provide comprehensive, end-to-end support infrastructure to help adaptation entrepreneurs and start-ups to reach the market fast, scale their solutions and attract sufficient investment. Climate-KIC already does this, but with a focus on mitigation, delivering the most comprehensive and successful start-up acceleration programme globally. Now we want to turn our full capabilities to adaptation, which has been less of a focus. We have started by offering our Climate Launchpad programme in 60 countries through which we are about to launch a Climate Adaptation and Resilience Innovation Challenge. This however is just one building block of this end-to-end support system that starts from building interest at schools, through to attracting significant investment in the company. But, even then our experience proves that is not enough. To really make a major impact we need to see local adaptation innovation ecosystems/clusters emerge that both strengthen the adaptation economy and equally can mean solutions are integrated into transformative resilience plans. We also know that this takes improvements in skills and education programmes, in committed local leadership and a network of supporting organisations that form the backbone of the local ecosystem. The overall goal is to create jobs, scale adaptation solutions, positively impact resilience, drive wider economic value and place resilience building at the heart of development processes.
1000CAN
The main goal of the 1000 Cities Adapt Now global program is to accelerate adaptation in 1000 cities by 2030, reducing climate risks and improving the quality of life for 500 million to 1 billion people.
To achieve this, the program is promoting a comprehensive package of measures including the implementation of nature-based solutions, urban water resilience solutions and a transformative capacity building program. An alliance of core delivery partners will start implementation in a first batch of 100 cities. This program will focus on climate adaptation in cities as leverage for an inclusive and resilient COVID-19 recovery, while creating a pathway to reach the Paris climate adaptation goals.
Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment (CCRI)
CCRI recognizes that for truly resilient and sustainable infrastructure both mitigation and re-allocation of risks are necessary, and in fact they work best together. Efforts are being made globally to build more resilient infrastructure, however there is no high-level coordination on what the best practice measures are.
We have, therefore, developed an immediate approach to overcome the market failures we observe, which, for now focuses exclusively on:
developing key solutions and analytics for the infrastructure asset class encouraging the pricing and management of physical climate risk in real asset investment ensuring deliverables align with the needs and characteristics of investors and public policy-makers.
Resurgence – DARAJA
The Inclusive City – Community Forecasting and Early warning Service
DARAJA, which means ‘bridge’ in Swahili, is a service and partnership that aims to improve weather and climate information services (WCIS), including early warnings of extreme weather, for urban users.
By adopting a system-wide approach, DARAJA builds ‘bridges’ and operational partnerships between the actors critical to the co-design of the products, dissemination channels and feedback loops for weather forecasts and extreme weather alerts.
These actors in the system include:
The DARAJA Service is delivered via a range of digital and analogue tools, apps and resources hosted on a digital platform into a growing programme of urban demonstrators.
The DARAJA Service has been piloted already in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam with strong impact results and a 20:1 benefit cost ratio (BCR) in enhanced productivity and avoided climate related damage and loss to users.
The Service is also being adapted for deployment into Small Island States (SIDS) via a demonstrator for the Caribbean based in Kingston, Jamaica.
Financed initially by the FCDO Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa (WISER ) Programme and Climate KIC, DARAJA has won two significant independently judged awards: from the Global Resilience Partnership (Innovation in Resilience) and from British Expertise (International Climate Cooperation).
Frontline Funds Accelerator
Frontline communities have a great deal at stake as the climate changes, and they are developing creative, bottom-up solutions at the frontline of climate action, from which many others stand to benefit. This partnership aims to ensure already functioning ‘frontline funds’ are well resourced and replicate them. By developing trusted relationships with donors, strengthening the governance and operational capacities of grassroots-led frontline funds, and learning and adapting the process through a coalition of social movements, the Frontline funds Accelerator will enable a shift in the broader recognition, perceptions, and appetite for investing larger flows of funding through grassroots-controlled mechanisms.
Resilience Knowledge Coalition
The Resilience Knowledge Coalition is hosted by the Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) and co-led by SouthSouthNorth (SSN) / Climate Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) as well as the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) / Least Developed Countries Universities Consortium on Climate Change (LUCCC). The coalition is built on Principles of Locally Led Adaptation and co-created with organizations and stakeholders from the Global South and North. Our purpose: Getting the best knowledge and practice on resilience used to shape policies, plans and investments to deliver a resilient future.
The coalition is a “network of networks” that connects existing initiatives and builds on their successes through a systemic approach so that they can become greater than the sum of their parts. This focuses on regions and countries where it matters the most and tackle the most intractable challenges at the intersection of peace and stability, disaster resilience and food and water security. The coalition has three functions: Collaborate, Connect and Apply. The functions are interrelated; for instance, members engaged in peer-learning under Collaborate can interact on virtual platforms under Connect and benefit from the incubation and MEL support under Apply.
The Centre for Climate Justice Glasgow Caledonian University
Climate financing is significantly lower than what is needed with adaptation costs estimated at USD 180 billion annually from 2020 to 2030. We need transformational impact and better gender and climate just financing structures to be revamped aligning financial flows with financial need especially for women and girls. The vision for the solution is to be able to advance equitable, just and gender sensitive climate finance.
Least Developed Countries Universities Consortium on Climate Change (LUCCC)
The Least Developed Countries (LDC) Universities Consortium on Climate Change (LUCCC) ultimately aims to capacitate all 48 LDCs to become able to adapt effectively to the adverse impacts of climate change. It intends to achieve this goal by developing a South-South and South-South-North knowledge sharing and capacity development programme on adaptation to climate change in universities and training Institutes in all the 48 LDCs.
The Climate Champions invite you to participate in the Sharm Adaptation Agenda Public Survey. Your insights will be instrumental in assessing the progress we’ve made across key areas.
This nature-based solution involves creating up to 20 acres of engineered oyster reefs and up to 30 acres of salt marshes to help protect the vulnerable coastline of Florida’s Apalachicola Bay.
Discover how Race to Resilience partner, Build Change, empowers people in the Philippines with resilient housing, leveraging microfinance solutions to address disaster risks and improve lives.
Resilience experts and members of Race to Resilience’s MAG advisory group, Anand Patwardhan, Emilie Beauchamp, Ana Maria Lobo-Guerrero, and Paulina Aldunce, underline the transformative impact of the Sharm El Sheikh Adaptation Agenda in driving collaboration and fast-tracking action to bridge the adaptation gap and support the world’s most vulnerable communities.
