Ready-to-Fund Resilience Toolkit and Guide
Ready-to-Fund Resilience is a package of resources describing how local governments and partners can design more fundable resilience projects by pulling specific policy levers, seeking key partnerships, using innovative accounting practices, inverting power structures, and rethinking processes.
Description
Ready-to-Fund Resilience is a package of resources developed by an expert advisory group including city officials, finance experts, and resilience organizations across national adaptation networks convened by Climate Resilience Consulting (CRC) and the American Society of Adaptation Professionals (ASAP).
Ready-to-Fund Resilience is developed for small- and-mid-sized local government practitioners working on resilience; small- and-mid-sized local government department leads with power over, and a stake in, climate resilience funding and finance; and organizations and government bodies with the capacity and jurisdiction to support local government climate resilience funding and finance through policy, resources, technical assistance, partnerships, or process change.
Centered around 10 key characteristics of successful climate resilience projects, from grey infrastructure to green infrastructure and social infrastructure, Ready-to-Fund supports local government practitioners to:
- More effectively operate within the resilience funding and finance system.
- Better prepare governments to receive funding and finance for climate resilience-building.
- Create social equity through resilience funding and finance.
The insights from Ready-to-Fund Resilience support the creation of vibrant, equitable, and disaster-resilient local governments rather than temporary ‘fixes’ that perpetuate the status quo and lead to further disaster risks. To fully act on these insights, a stronger enabling environment for both public and private funding and finance via updated policy, regulation, changed collaboration processes, and new approaches to financial analysis are needed.
Ready-to-Fund is supported by the Climate Resilience Fund’s Coordination and Collaboration in the Resilience Ecosystem Program. It is one of four projects providing input into a practitioner guide for the US Climate Resilience Toolkit’s Steps to Resilience Process managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Did the Sendai Framework change or contribute to changes in your activities/organization? If so, how?
The work of Climate Resilience Consulting and the American Society of Adaptation Professionals is focused on climate change and climate-related hazards. Thus, activities being conducted both contribute to and are guided by several global agendas including the the Paris Agreement, the Sendai Framework, and the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Ready-to-Fund Resilience is particularly part of the good practices of ARISE, the Private Sector Alliance for Disaster the Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies. The project addresses all five commitments for ARISE, namely to raise awareness, influence, share knowledge, catalyze and implement activities to contribute to the Sendai Framework.
What led you to make this commitment/initiative?
What was your position before making this Voluntary Commitment / prior to the Sendai Framework?
In 2020, the US incurred 22 billion-dollar disasters and reports from UNEP and World Bank forecast continually rising disaster costs, regardless of the scale of mitigation that occurs. In tandem, deep social inequities and racial injustices inhibit otherwise capable communities from thriving. The obligation to mitigate disaster risk and damage has triggered a movement to build more green and equitable local governments. While unavoidable costs may drive action, the multiplicative opportunities and community co-benefits that can be created provide motivation to plan for and build climate resilience. Still, plans for change often fall short of mobilizing finance. Making the business case and securing resilience financing are the most common inhibiting factors. Furthermore, growing understanding of inequitable conditions creates an imperative to transform our socio-economic systems. What we do with resilience-building funds and financing will prove highly influential in determining what kind of communities we live in decades from now.
