As climate change accelerates, the U.S. faces a rising tide of physical risk. In 2024 alone, 27 separate billion-dollar weather disasters caused $183 billion in direct damages. By mid-century, projections show an annual $1.2 trillion in physical climate risk costs to global companies (for instance, more-frequent damage to ports will disrupt trade), while climate-driven devaluation of U.S. homes could erase $1.5 trillion in market value and push insurance premiums ever higher. Collectively, climate-related disasters have cost the U.S. economy at least $6.6 trillion ove in higher insurance premiums, cleanup spending and other expenses over the past 12 years. Simply put, our economic and policy structures are not built for the climate we face.

What’s needed is resilience – the capacity of individuals, communities, and systems to survive, adapt, and thrive despite shocks and stresses.

Resilience offers both protection and opportunity. Every $1 spent on pre-disaster mitigation saves an estimated $13 in avoided losses. But the benefits go further: resilience investments create jobs, stimulate innovation, safeguard business continuity and public services, and strengthen community cohesion. This broader value is known as the “resilience dividend” and research shows that the economic, social, and environmental benefits of resilience investments are often twice the value of avoided losses. For instance, urban resilience measures can spur development and help mitigate emissions.

The idea that many investments are sound even if disasters never occur is a chance to take advantage of what Jay Koh, of The Lightsmith Group, calls the “unavoidable opportunity.” Our country will inevitably need to invest in climate adaptation and resilience – some estimates put the capital needed at $100 to 200 billion per year, if not more. But this investment is not just about protecting against downside risks, it is also about investing in safer homes, stronger businesses, and better jobs.

Despite this compelling case, there remains a significant “resilience gap” – the disparity between the benefits of proactive adaptation and resilience investment and the limited pace and scale of current efforts. This gap leaves communities, businesses, and governments exposed to preventable losses, unrealized economic potential, and social and environmental vulnerabilities.

The stakes are significant.

For civil society, the consequences are personal and immediate: uncertainty about where people can safely live, work, and invest. For governments, the implications are fiscal and systemic: declining property values, rising insurance premiums, and stressed infrastructure threaten long-term solvency. Businesses face mounting disruptions and supply chain volatility and are likely to face higher insurance costs or the loss of insurance, eroding margins and jeopardizing market access. And investors face climate-exposed assets and mispriced risk, threatening portfolio performance and stability.

Closing the resilience gap, therefore, is not merely about minimizing losses – it is about realizing comprehensive economic, social, and environmental benefits that contribute to sustainable and equitable growth – and making those benefits tangible to all stakeholders.

A pioneer spirit is beginning to reshape how we approach resilience in the U.S. and beyond. In Truckee, California, a Community Wildfire Protection Plan blends local tax measures, state grants, fuel thinning, and predictive analytics to reduce wildfire risk. Houston’s Resilient Houston strategy unites infrastructure, housing, and equity goals under one adaptation framework, with buyout programs and green stormwater systems at its core. In Los Angeles, the Rebuilding with Resilience initiative recently convened diverse stakeholders to drive post-wildfire recovery.

Corporate-led efforts are gaining traction too. Coca-Cola is investing in over 200 high-risk watersheds, many in the U.S., to return more water than it consumes, bolstering community and business resilience. Duke Energy is undergrounding lines, hardening the grid, and piloting community resilience hubs in partnership with local governments.

Globally, Barbados’s Bridgetown Initiative is redefining sovereign finance by embedding climate resilience, with the country’s first “debt-for-climate” swap unlocking $125 million for adaptation – offering inspiration for U.S. innovation in public finance.

Together, these examples prove that progress is possible. But they remain fragmented and limited in scale. The opportunity now is to connect and grow these efforts into a national movement that scales ambition, deepens collaboration, and makes resilience the norm.

Despite growing awareness and a range of promising initiatives, the U.S. adaptation and resilience (A&R) ecosystem is not yet equipped to deliver the scale or pace of change required. Seven key systemic barriers cut across the public, private, and financial sectors.

• A&R is not yet mainstreamed, and the benefits are not well known. The upside of proactive adaptation is not consistently visible or valued. Planners and strategists often lack the frameworks to factor future risks or economic, social, and environmental co-benefits into present-day decisions, meaning A&R remains under-prioritized across capital planning, corporate strategy, and public policy.
• Incentives reward recovery over prevention. Insurance, mortgage, and lending systems rarely price in the value of risk reduction. In many cases, current financing and regulatory structures inadvertently subsidize inaction – for example, through flat mortgage rates or uniform insurance premiums regardless of hazard exposure.
• The financing ecosystem is underdeveloped. Adaptation finance lacks widely adopted, standardized taxonomies, scalable financial instruments, mechanisms to integrate catalytic capital, and sufficient project preparation support. This limits pipeline development and the flow of capital, particularly to small and mid-sized communities and projects.
• Private sector engagement is limited and fragmented. While some companies have taken steps to protect their assets, few account for their dependencies on shared systems – such as energy, water, labor, and transportation – or co-invest in broader community resilience. Many plan to add insurance or simply shift supply chains, which are unlikely to be effective strategies in the medium- to long-run.
• Capacity is constrained across sectors. Governments, businesses, and financial institutions alike face gaps in technical expertise, staff time, and bandwidth to plan, structure, and deliver resilience initiatives. Short-term planning cycles, siloed decision-makers, and limited policy and regulatory support exacerbate this challenge.
• The solution set is poorly defined. There are no shared frameworks or tools for identifying, comparing, and sequencing adaptation interventions, making it difficult for decision-makers to prioritize among physical, financial, and policy levers or weigh potential tradeoffs.
• Coordination mechanisms are lacking. Despite overlapping objectives, government, business, and civil society often operate in silos, without effective platforms for collaboration. Local stakeholders, especially, play a critical role in preparing for and responding to disasters and enhancing resilience and must be engaged as part of the process.

These challenges are compounded by a broader context of macroeconomic volatility, weakened federal coordination, strained state and local budgets, and growing public distrust – all of which constrain the space for decisive action.

Meeting the scale and urgency of the moment requires a systems strategy that operates across three fronts: framing, coordination, and execution. Each front must include both bottom-up efforts (led by communities) and top-down enablers (led by regional and national actors), and should integrate public, private, and civil society sectors. See Figure 1 below for specific examples.

1. Framing

Clarify the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of resilience

A clear and compelling economic case for resilience and clarity on the path forward are both essential to securing broader commitment and investment.

In the future, AI-enabled solutions could super-charge framing by automating risk assessment and intervention identification.

2. Coordination

Align systems and stakeholders for systemic impact

Purpose-built networks and innovation hubs can more effectively address key systems barriers than today’s more fragmented approach.

Connecting resilience networks with innovation hubs would provide the opportunity to test novel approaches, connect national and regional actors to place-based initiatives, and disseminate promising approaches. Key challenges to address include integrating risk transfer and risk reduction, scaling blended finance, and developing resilience standards, among many others.

3. Execution

Deliver projects and mobilize capital at scale

Practical delivery and funding mechanisms are essential to move from resilience strategy to executed projects.

While the exact solutions required will be different for public entities, corporates, and financial institutions, all the above are needed.

Systemiq – the world’s first pure play “systems-change” company and a certified BCorp – is working to support efforts to address these systems challenges in the U.S.

Our A&R experience includes thought leadership on the importance of resilience for growth, stability, and competitiveness in support of COP30, how to catalyze investment into resilience (The Resilience Effect), developing investment roadmaps (Barbados 2035: An investment plan for prosperity and resilience), resilient urban master planning (the Belém Airport Innovation District), developing the economic narratives to support resilience (with the Gates Foundation) including for insurance (with the Insurance Development Forum and the Bridgetown Initiative), as well as other related efforts (with the Blended Finance Taskforce and the Independent High Level Expert Group (IHLEG) on Climate Finance).

We see the opportunity for a new era of U.S. leadership on resilience – driven by systemic action, powered by diverse coalitions, and centered on tangible outcomes for people, communities, and ecosystems. We look forward to continuing to collaborate with partners across sectors to develop the interventions mentioned over the next few pages (among many others), close the resilience gap, and build a more secure, prosperous, and equitable future.

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