Research Report: Toward a Climate Resilience Financial System for US Cities
Below is a summary of our new research report, produced with partners Cadmus Group LLC and Ramboll. Financial support provide by Summit and Kresge Foundations. Full report available here.
Purpose
This research project’s purpose is to identify ways to accelerate the development and growth of public and private financial resources that US cities can use to implement climate resilience plans and projects. Cities often cite access to capital as a major barrier to the implementation of their climate resilience plans.
Findings
Climate risks disrupt city financing.Cities use multiple, well-established public and private systems to pay for their public responsibilities, but these systems do not have the ability to meet the challenges of financing the mounting climate resilience needs of cities. Barriers include:
- Insufficient publicrevenue for climate resilience projects.
- New and uncertain financial risks posed by climate changes.
- Inherent imbalances between the burdens and benefits of climate resilience projects.
- Misaligned public policies and markets.
- Resilience projects that fall outside of traditional municipal jurisdictions.
Emerging innovations in climate resilience finance do not sum to a system-building approach.A growing number of developments seek to address barriers and opportunities in climate resilience financing. We identified 30 of these [Table 1], but they are mostly “one-off” innovations and changes made by an individual city or financial institution or insurer for a specific project or financial mechanism. Most of these efforts are largely disconnected from each other. The public and private sector players engaged in climate resilience finance efforts do not have a shared vision, framework, or strategies for developing, as quickly as possible, a comprehensive, large-scale urban climate resilience financial system. The set of innovations does provide a great deal of the research-and-development that could evolve into a more systemic and impactful stage of change.
A system for city climate resilience finance would contain three key elements:*
- City transaction capabilities, including adaptation planning, adaptation investment planning, governance arrangements at metro-region and city district scales; and public revenue sources and funding mechanisms.
- State and federal government policies, including: adaptation planning requirements and support; climate resilience standards; flexible governance structure frameworks; insurance market regulations and public “last resort” insurance policy; and grants and loans for city adaptation projects.
- Financial, insurance, and real estate market capacities, including products and services; risk assessment and disclosure; risk pricing; and lending and investment standards.
Recommendation
Development of an urban climate resilience financial system can be accelerated and expanded through collaborations of cities, state and federal governments, and real estate, insurance, and financial markets, as well as community-based sectors such as health care and utilities, that prioritize, design, and implement system-building solutions.
Given the highly distributed nature of the system that exists and needs to be developed, cities—as the entities directly facing the financing challenge—are the only players with an overriding interest in developing all of the elements of a climate resilience financial system. But they would need support and resources from their partner organizations, other sectors and levels of government, as well as philanthropy, to help lead and sustain such an effort.
A starting point for developing a system-building collaborative approach would be to organize cities to link, learn, and align with each other, and act in concert with relevant private sectors and other levels of government to develop and implement projects that build a climate resilience financial system.
