GCA and Partners Launch the Investors Resilience Challenge to create a global standard to qualify investments for Climate Adaptation and Resilience
B
elém, Brazil, 10 November 2025 — As part of the Adaptation and Resilience Investors Collaborative (ARIC), the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and partners launched the Investors Resilience Challenge for public consultations at COP30. This pioneering initiative brings together leading development finance institutions (DFIs), multilateral development banks (MDBs), and private investors to accelerate investment in climate adaptation and resilience across developing and emerging economies.
The Investors Resilience Challenge provides a common approach: a simple, flexible set of criteria that can be applied across public and private markets, for DFIs, private sector co-investors and investee companies to qualify and align on adaptation and resilience investments. Developed by ARIC members, the Challenge aims to address the persistent barriers that have slowed private investment into adaptation —fragmented definitions, inconsistent metrics, and complex qualification processes.
Through ARIC, DFIs have developed the ARIC Resilience Framework as guidelines that demonstrate how to align investing for climate adaptation under the challenge. This framework builds on existing tools and the common MDB-International Development Finance Club principles for climate finance used by DFIs as well as frameworks and methodologies used by the wider investment community, including IIGCC’s Climate Resilience Investment Framework (CRIF) and Physical Climate Risk Appraisal Methodology (PCRAM 2.0). An investment needs to meet at least two of the five ARIC Resilience Framework criteria in order to be aligned with the Investors Resilience Challenge.
“Climate adaptation and resilience represent one of the world’s largest untapped investment opportunities—an estimated USD 1 trillion today,” said Professor Patrick V. Verkooijen, President and CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation. “The Investors Resilience Challenge is a vital step in turning that opportunity into reality. By creating a shared language for adaptation finance, we can unlock the trillions in private capital needed to protect economies, people, and nature from escalating climate risks.”
The Challenge supports the goals of the Paris Agreement’s Global Goal on Adaptation and the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap, aligning public and private finance with the urgent need to build resilience against physical climate risks such as floods, droughts, heatwaves, and storms. It focuses on two main pathways: resilience of investments – ensuring assets, companies, and portfolios are better protected against physical climate risks; and resilience through investments – scaling investments that deliver adaptation and resilience solutions, products, and services to communities and economies.
Through this joint effort, DFIs and investors will work to promote best practices for adaptation and resilience investing, enhance transparency, and strengthen collaboration between public and private financiers. The Challenge also recognizes the catalytic role of technical assistance in helping banks, funds, and companies build the capacity to qualify and report adaptation outcomes.
Initial case studies under the Investors Resilience Challenge already demonstrate the diversity and impact of potential investments—from early-stage venture funds delivering climate-smart agricultural innovations across Africa, to blended finance facilities supporting smallholder farmers in South Asia, and large-scale water utility loans integrating climate risk management in Latin America.
Further progress on the Challenge, including pilot results and investor commitments, will be reported at COP31.
