Resilience from the ground up: Assessing city-level approaches to climate risk and adaptation

Resilience from the ground up: assessing city-level approaches to climate risk and adaptation is an Economist Impact report, supported by Zurich Insurance Group. It explores the state of climate resilience at the individual and community levels across Amsterdam, Cairo, Cape Town, Dubai, Jakarta, Madrid, Mumbai, New York City, São Paulo and Tokyo using insights gathered from 5,000 residents.

This report finds that four in five people believe their city is underprepared to manage climate-related risk with water management infrastructure being the most vulnerable to climate-related risks. It also finds that climate change exacerbates existing inequalities, with its impacts varying across gender, age, and socioeconomic groups. Respondents expect governments at all levels to collaborate on climate change adaptation and believe that the private sector is not doing enough to support climate adaptation in cities. While individuals are taking personal steps to become more resilient to climate change, high costs, insufficient knowledge, and lack of trust in government policies are holding them back