When adaptation managers approach funders with a climate-proofing measure, there's one question they can count on hearing: "What's the return on this investment?"

It's a question that Oliver Marchand is determined to answer

Oliver is the CEO and co-founder of Resilens, a new start-up that styles itself as a "decision engine" for adaptation — one able to calculate the real-world costs and benefits of adaptation measures. He wants to give adaptation practitioners something they've never had access to before: an all-in-one system for transforming climate data into prioritized, fundable investment plans.

Oliver is no newcomer to climate tech. In this episode, he talks us through his previous adventures with Carbon Delta, the climate risk analytics firm he co-founded and sold to MSCI in 2019, and shares his thoughts on what the sector got right — and wrong — over the past decade.

He also offers his thesis on what's holding back investment in adaptation, and why standardizing "adaptation return" may be essential to unlocking the capital desperately needed to prepare and protect from worsening climate shocks.

If you're an adaptation practitioner, wannabe adaptech founder, or work in climate finance, this is an episode you don't want to miss.

Climate Proof has also partnered with Resilens to publish a manifesto on why adaptation needs a new decision logic. Read it HERE

Chapters

00:00:00 Introduction

00:02:00 Oliver's Origin Story

00:03:30 Carbon Delta and the MSCI Years

00:04:30 What Climate Tech Got Right — and Wrong

00:07:00 Converting a Sceptic: The Case for Adaptation

00:08:30 The Rise of the Adaptation Manager

00:11:00 Introducing Resilens

00:13:30 Why Social Infrastructure and Heat?

00:15:30 The Competitive Moat

00:16:30 Theory of Change

00:19:00 Life Before Resilens: "Death by PDF"

00:25:00 The Data Security Question

00:27:30 Valuing the Unquantifiable

00:29:30 The Five-Year Vision

00:31:30 How to Find Oliver and Resilens

A recent survey by Climate Proof and Theia Finance Labs set out to answer this question. We canvassed over 80 experts on how governments, markets, and households are likely to respond to escalating extreme weather risks and slow-onset events, and surfaced responses that reveal a broad divergence of views on this most critical of issues.

In some areas, there was an uneasy consensus. A majority of respondents expect governments to choose after-the-fact disaster relief rather than systematic adaptation investment. Most believe insurers will retreat from high-risk areas — even as households increasingly turn to insurance as their primary line of defense. And nearly nine in ten expect meaningful climate-driven migration over the coming decade.

In other areas, though, respondents disagreed — like on how corporations are likely to address climate shocks to their assets and operations.

This episode, Jakob Thomä joins from Theia Finance Labs to unpack the survey results in full, and other his unvarnished opinions on why respondents may have given certain answers. He digs into the tensions and contradictions buried in the data, explaining why compound and cascading risks are finally being taken seriously, why climate tipping points belong in risk models even if they aren’t a near-term threat, and why the real wildcard in the physical risk story may not be the climate science at all — but the political choices that determine who ultimately picks up the bill.

For anyone trying to understand where expert opinion on physical climate risk actually stands, this episode is essential listening.

Climate Proof and Theia Finance Labs plan to release a full report on the survey results later this year.

💡 Read ‘How Climate Stress Tests May Underestimate Financial Losses From Physical Climate Risks’ by Theia Finance Labs HERE

Read ‘Mandatory Climate Insurance’ by Theia Finance Labs HERE

First, the good news. It looks like many more public companies are disclosing adaptation plans than two years ago — 40% up from 21%, based on a sample of more than 7,500 assessed by S&P. Large, investment-grade corporates in Europe have made even more progress, with 84% disclosing climate-proofing plans.

But, but, but….the substance of many of these strategies is still lacking. Significantly, not a single one of the large European companies analyzed by S&P “demonstrate the most advanced components of adaptation planning”. In addition, only 11 out of 70 have actually implemented their plans.

Paul digs into the latest findings and shares his candid opinions on why corporates seem to be saying more about climate risk while dragging their feet on doing something about it. He also touches on why climate physical risks rarely show up in credit ratings, and what market participants should keep in mind when evaluating companies’ climate-readiness.

For those who want an up-to-the-minute take on corporate adaptation efforts, this is the episode for you.

💡 Read S&P Global’s Mercury Rising report HERE

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news

It's a compelling enough argument — but one that doesn't go far enough. Today's guests want companies to remember that climate resilience is not something they can achieve alone. They need the communities in which they operate in to join the fight, too.

Verena Radulovic and Libby Zemaitis at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions — better known as C2ES — are working to foster corporate-community partnerships on resilience that yield benefits for both sides.

Verena leads C2ES's business engagement work, overseeing its efforts to push resilience and adaptation up the corporate agenda. Libby runs the Climate Resilient Communities Accelerator — a place-based program now operating across Colorado, Washington, and Texas — that brings together local government, businesses, non-profits, and first responders to build coordinated resilience plans against specific climate hazards.

In this episode, the two lay out why corporate and community resilience are two sides of the same coin, walk through case studies from AT&T, Meta, National Grid, and others, and make the case for stronger public-private partnerships to scale climate-proofing efforts across the US.

For anyone trying to understand the community-corporate resilience nexus, this episode is for you.

💡 Learn more about the C2ES Climate Resilient Communities Accelerator HERE

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news

Starting around 2015, central banks and financial supervisors started probing lenders on their climate risk practices, eager to head off potential bank failures and system-wide stresses because of mounting extreme weather risks and the shift to a net-zero economy.

In the space of a few years, Wall Street became home to a new wave of risk management professionals, including climate risk modelers, sustainability analysts, and stress-test specialists. Public institutions — from the Bank of England to the Federal Reserve — also skilled up with climate risk-savvy professionals.

At this time, one of the movers and shakers in this niche was today's guest Kevin Stiroh — an Executive Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and later a Senior Advisor to the Board of Governors itself — who ran point for the central bank on several major climate supervisory initiatives.

Then, President Trump was re-elected. 'Climate' became a dirty word, and a host of central banking initiatives targeting banks' safety and soundness in the face of physical and transition risks were quietly shelved.

Following the change in administration, Stiroh joined DC-based think tank Resources for the Future, where he continues to fly the flag for climate-aware risk management across the financial system, including by helping establish the Climate-related Financial and Macroeconomic Risk Initiative in concert with Harvard's Salata Institute.

In this episode, Stiroh reflects on the climate-related efforts of the Federal Reserve and offers his view on the state of bank climate risk management today. He also expounds on his new role at Resources for the Future, and his hopes for the climate risk profession amidst fierce political headwinds.

For those interested in the past, present, and future of climate-related financial risk management, this is a must-listen.

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Amidst the turmoil of President Trump's second coming, grants for small businesses and promising climate technologies all but evaporated. Indeed, the very word "climate" became politically radioactive in Washington.

Founders who'd spent years building companies around federal funding suddenly found themselves scrambling for cash, and pushing against unprecedented policy headwinds.

So where does that leave climate start-ups in 2026?

Stacy Swann has seen climate finance from just about every angle. She's spearheaded blended finance efforts at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), founded and sold her own climate advisory firm, and is now helping channel early-stage capital into the next generation of resilience companies as co-founder of Resilient Earth Capital — a community of angel investors doing, as she puts it, 'Shark Tank' with would-be climate entrepreneurs.

In this episode, Stacy takes us inside the pitch process, explaining what gets angels excited, what makes them nervous, and the mistakes founders make again and again. She also shares her thoughts on the shift in the start-up landscape in the two and a half years since REC launched — from an initial rush of energy transition companies to a growing army of startups in agriculture, water, extreme heat, and wildfire.

She also has a clear-eyed take on what 2026 holds — and why, whatever the political climate, the physical climate is still going to drive investment.

For founders looking for capital, investors trying to make sense of this market, or anyone curious about where early-stage climate money is actually flowing right now, this episode is for you.

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It's the "uninsurability crisis".

This claims that America's insurance market is cracking under the weight of climate change. Premiums are soaring. Major carriers are pulling out of California, Florida, and other high-risk states. Homeowners who've lived in the same place for decades suddenly can't afford — or can't find — coverage.

And yet, paradoxically, the industry itself is still turning a profit.

So who is this crisis really for?

Kate Stein, Insurance Director at EDF+Business, has spent her career at the intersection of climate, insurance, and advocacy. In this episode, she explains why "uninsurability" is a crisis for policyholders long before it becomes a crisis for insurers — and what that distinction means for how we respond.

She also makes the case for a much more ambitious vision of what insurance could do, and how innovation — and greater collaboration with policyholders, developers, and banks — could save it from a climate death spiral.

For anyone grappling with what "uninsurability" really means, and how the industry could respond to climate-related stressors, this episode is for you.

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news

Why? You guessed it — climate change.

Higher temperatures are exacerbating the spread of crop-munching pests, waterway-clogging marine species, and disease-laden insects. Indeed, PIB risks are some of the fastest-growing and most costly in our climate-altered world. A recent paper in Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation even says they are on a par with storms, floods, and wildfires — increasing by 702% from 1980–1999 to 2000–2019.

And yet, PIB risk solutions are massively undercapitalized, and often overlooked in the adaptation investment universe.

Will Everill is on a mission to change this. He's the founder of UpRoot Capital, a new climate adaptation VC and angel syndicate targeting early-stage companies that help customers detect, monitor, and control PIB risks amidst the changing climate.

In this episode, he breaks down the emerging DX (diagnostic) and RX (control and remediation) technologies looking to tackle these threats and save agribusinesses of all stripes from biological catastrophe.

He also maps the climate mechanisms driving PIB explosions. These include warmer winters — which allow pests to overwinter and reproduce faster — and shifting wildlife migration patterns. He illustrates the impacts with vivid examples: mountain pine beetles killing 100,000 square miles of North American forest, spotted lanternflies spreading across US cities and orchards, beds of zebra mussels blocking waterways, and ticks expanding into Europe and the UK to spread lyme disease.

As one of the only investors explicitly focused on PIB as an adaptation category, Will also talks candidly about the challenges building a market that doesn't yet have a common language. This starts with educating investors on the size of the opportunity — and getting start-ups to realize "adaptation" is a category that can open wallets.

For those curious to learn about one of the great, overlooked investment frontiers in adaptation, this is a must-listen episode.

🔗 Learn more about UpRoot Capital HERE

📰 Read Will's newsletter, The Adapt, HERE

It's a question asked time and again here at Climate Proofers — and it's an important one. After all, if institutions can't be stirred to harden their climate defenses, the consequences will be costly: economically, financially, and societally.

It's also a question that Mike Williams, President of ClimateFirst, has bet his career on answering. With his company, ClimateFirst, he's gone all-in on quantifying climate risks to buildings and producing resiliency plans to mitigate against them.

In this episode, Mike shares how a decades-long engineering career provided a front-row seat to the emerging climate risk and resilience challenge, and explains how this inspired him to develop a scalable software solution to help real estate investors and owners take it on.

We also unpack ClimateFirst's first-of-a-kind case study, which illustrates the wisdom of investing in resilience at the building level. Mike walks us through his team's analysis of a single multifamily building "cloned" across nine US locations — each exposed to different hazards from extreme heat to flooding to hurricane-force winds. The results show that location is everything, with projected 10-year losses ranging from $70,000 to nearly $5mn for this identical asset.

He then shares the adaptive measures that can materially reduce these losses — without breaking the bank.

For all those in or around the real estate investment space — and indeed, all those interested in quantifying climate risk and resilience — this is the episode for you.

🔗 Read Investing in Resilience: Making Physical Climate Risk a Financial Priority for Real Estate HERE

📖 Read more ClimateFirst resources HERE

In this episode, E3G Senior Policy Advisor Ana Mulio Alvarez returns to the Climate Proofers podcast to deliver a frank post-mortem on the Belém conference. She gets into the gory details on how the Brazilian presidency tried to center adaptation in the talks, only to have its own messaging derailed somewhat by President Lula's energetic push for a fossil fuel roadmap. The result: a COP defined by competing priorities and scrambled narratives.

Ana walks us through the summit's headline-making call to triple adaptation finance, and why it matters despite the ambiguous language used and lack of a clear baseline. She also comments on the supporting infrastructure of work programs, networking hubs, and financing roadmaps that may (or may not) continue to strengthen adaptation financing efforts heading into Bonn and COP31.

Then, she offers a forensic account of the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) indicator negotiations, which collapsed into a confusing — and controversial — mess at the conference's climax. She explains how the final set of 59 indicators now face a legitimacy problem that could haunt the adaptation agenda for years to come. Still, she sees a silver lining. With fresh scrutiny, new analysis, and a healthy dose of political pressure, the flawed indicators have the potential to be transformed into something more useful down the line.

Ana also touches on a range of other adaptation issues spotlighted at the summit, from the overdue assessment of National Adaptation Plans to the disappointments experienced by the cash-starved Adaptation Fund.

If you want the most honest, deeply informed readout of COP30's adaptation highs and lows — Ana's got you covered.

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news

She walks us through the fast-moving state of play on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), and the ongoing debate over a proposed set of indicators that could help countries speak the same language on climate resilience.

While the indicators — and the negotiations around them — are technical and complex, their purpose is clear: to give the adaptation process its equivalent of the 1.5°C temperature rise target for mitigation. Sabrina talks us through the obstacles in the way of a final agreement, and explains why these last few days of crunch talks are likely to make or break the adaptation agenda.

Sabrina also shares what she's been working on at COP30 — from helping launch nine "Resilience Must-Knows," a new qualitative framework for decision-makers, to unveiling FINI (Fostering Investable National Planning and Implementation) a major initiative aimed at making national adaptation plans genuinely investable. There's also insights on private sector engagement at this year's summit, particularly from insurers keen to protect their business models from runaway climate risks.

If you're eager to get up to speed on all things adaptation at this year's COP, this is the episode for you.

Sign up to climateproof.news for more news and insights on climate adaptation finance, tech, and policy.

Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news

On today's episode, Climate Proofers sits down with Simon Zadek, Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner of Morphosis, a new company stocked with sustainable finance and business veterans looking to bring about an economy fit for a 1.5°C-plus world.

Simon traces his career from early work on labor rights and social auditing through to his leadership in green finance and nature-based investment, culminating with the insight that sparked Morphosis: that climate change is advancing faster than policy and markets can mitigate, demanding a wholesale rethink of how economies adapt.

He then unpacks the company's debut report, "The Rise of the Adaptation Economy", which sketches out a broad policy framework designed to help adaptation markets scale — much like how feed-in tariffs and offtake agreements propelled the renewable energy boom.

Zadek argues that governments must learn to apply a "transversal lens" to policy areas like financial regulation, R&D strategy, and trade policy in order to make adaptation profitable and attractive to private capital. Without this, he warns, adaptation will remain stuck in pilot mode, dependent on dwindling public subsidies.

For those in the weeds of adaptation policy who want to understand how markets are being reimagined to support climate resilience, this is the pod for you.

🔗 Read "The Rise of the Adaptation Economy" report from Morphosis HERE

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news

COP30, the UN Climate Change Conference, is about to kick off in Brazil — and expectations are running high for adaptation advocates. Brazilian leaders are fueling that momentum, with COP30 CEO Ana Toni calling the summit a "turning point" for adaptation and resilience.

Once again, the question of finance hangs heavy over the talks. This time around, it's focused on whether rich countries will commit to a dedicated adaptation finance target, one that would channel much-needed resources to poor nations struggling under a barrage of compounding climate shocks.

Which country groups are pushing for this target? What are the arguments against? And how has the adaptation finance landscape shifted over the last year between COPs?

On today's episode, Ben Abraham, Senior Consultant at Instituto Talanoa, a leading Brazilian climate policy think tank, provides the answers.

Ben explains why adaptation finance risks "falling off a cliff" without a new collective target, and unpacks the push by Least Developed Countries to triple current commitments to US$120bn a year by 2030. He outlines the political headwinds from donor nations, the tension between grant-based and loan-based finance, and the technical challenges of tracking whether countries are really delivering what they promise.

The interview also ranges into the debate on the role of blended finance and multilateral development banks in driving adaptation, and explores whether private capital will ever become a meaningful contributor to the cause.

Ben closes by sharing his and Instituto Talanoa's hopes for the summit, along with his vision of what a successful negotiated outcome on adaptation would look like.

Sign up to climateproof.news for more news and insights on climate adaptation finance, tech, and policy.

Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

Wildfires, floods, and hurricanes continue to harry electric utilities and take down grid infrastructure, all while the country is rushing frantically to build out additional capacity to meet the energy demands of the AI craze.

How can power providers expand and build resilience against extreme weather shocks at the same time — without blowing the bank?

Getting access to better data and risk modeling would be a good start.

Rhizome is a pioneer in the buzzy grid resilience tech market, and is already working with a clutch of big-name utilities to help them analyze and guard against climate-related risk.

On this episode, the company's CEO and Co-Founder — Mishal Thadani — takes us through his journey from wind and solar energy to the resilience space, and offers his perspectives on one of the hottest niches in adaptation tech today.

He also shares stories from the field: from Texas utilities swapping wooden poles for steel to Northeast operators raising substations above floodwaters.

He also reveals what's driving utilities to finally treat resilience as a core business function, and how his company is helping them stretch billions in adaptation spending further.

🔗 Learn more about Rhizome HERE

🔗 Check out Rhizome's 2025 Wildfire Investment Snapshot HERE

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

Enter NANOPLUME, a start-up working on super-insulating, super-thin, and super-light materials using bio-aerogels — free from petrochemicals and 100% biocompatible (meaning they don't harm those living around them).

Theresa Hoffmann, CEO at NANOPLUME, joins the pod to share the magic of bio-aerogels, and explain how they can transform the way we insulate our homes and transport goods around the world.

She also describes her personal journey to launching an adaptation start-up after stints at a top-flight consultancy and a deep-tech investment house, and offers insights on how to position adaptation hardware to cost-conscious consumers.

🔗Learn more about NANOPLUME's bio-aerogel tech HERE

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

Hunter Maats is betting his career on it.

In this final episode of our New York Climate Week interview series, the CEO of Resilience Investments — a real estate asset manager — digs into the climate and affordability factors causing people (and capital) to flee the Sunbelt for the Great Lakes, and what this means for US housing markets.

He also lays out the case for forward-looking, climate-informed investing in real assets, and why a resilience-first approach should replace the uncomfortable duality of ESG analysis and traditional financial modeling

If you want to understand the next big shift in real estate and investment markets, this is the episode for you.

🔗 Learn about Resilience Investments HERE

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

11/25/2025: This podcast was edited after publication to clarify the origin of Resilience Investments

It's the world's hottest technology, with humongous potential to augment and accelerate a whole host of climate-positive actions. No wonder it was popular among the panelists and networkers crisscrossing Manhattan last month.

One proponent of AI in the climate space is today's guest, Krista Tukiainen, the Co-Founder of ClimateAligned — an AI-powered start-up that's democratizing sustainability data and climate assessments at a fraction of the price of the big incumbents.

She shares her thoughts on Climate Week and the changing language around climate investment, before drawing back the curtain on ClimateAligned — and explaining how tools like brief.green are lowering the cost of high-quality climate assessments and enabling the credible tracking of adaptation investments at scale.

Then she and Louie discuss why smaller AI-first teams may be the future of climate tech — and what business models can win in this new age.

🔗Learn more about ClimateAligned HERE

🔗Check out Brief.Green HERE

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In this fourth installment of our New York Climate Week interview series, David Leathers takes the mic to explain why employers need to treat climate risk as a health and productivity issue — not just an environmental one.

As Program Director of the National Commission on Climate and Workforce Health, David is helping companies connect the dots between extreme heat, worker well-being, and business performance. But as he explains, employers still have a long way to go to understand climate impacts, and to scale the necessary solutions.

🔗Learn more about the National Commission on Climate and Workforce Health HERE

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

Today, we have something for all the finance- and tech-heads among you.

In this episode, Louie sits down with Michael (Mike) Gulla, CEO and Co-Founder of Adaptive Insurance, to discuss how his company is bringing power outage insurance payouts to small businesses — fast.

Mike shares his insights from two decades in the insurance industry and explains why grid reliability is rapidly becoming a first-order financial risk for businesses. He also unpacks the explosion of interest in distributed energy, and why it reflects a fortress mentality among large companies eager to stay online no matter the weather.

Along the way, he makes the case for why parametric insurance isn't just a financial product, but a critical safety net amidst ongoing failures to harden our infrastructure for a climate-adjusted world.

If you're interested in how technology is shaping the future of climate risk insurance, this episode's for you.

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

Together, they share their reflections on Climate Week and the evolution of "resilience" as a theme with the corporate and investor crowd. Then, they unpack their collaboration on the new Commercial Real Estate Playbook — a first-of-its-kind, industry-driven blueprint for integrating resilience across the entire building value chain, from investors to insurers.

Abby also offers a lowdown on The Resiliency Company's pathbreaking Resilient Delta Fund — designed to help Los Angeles build back better and stronger against wildfire risks.

Whether you're in real estate, finance, or policy, there's something for everyone in this conversation.

🔗Learn about The Resiliency Company HERE

🔗 Learn about Ryan Companies HERE

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

Fresh from launching his new consultancy, Ben reflects on his decades-long federal career, as well as key milestones in the climate fight — from helping craft the landmark 2009 Endangerment Finding to coordinating the EPA's first adaptation strategy.

He shares his fresh perspective from outside government, including why municipal bonds might be a sleeping giant for local adaptation finance, how non-federal actors are keeping the climate agenda alive despite political headwinds, and why private actors may have more latitude to innovate on climate then their peers in the public sector.

Plus, he unpacks what's next for Operation Future — and how he plans to stay in the fight.

🔗Learn about Operation Future HERE

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

Weather intelligence is one of most exciting frontiers in adaptation and resilience tech.

But market solutions rub up against an uncomfortable paradox — the people who need weather intelligence the most are often those least able to access it.

It's a tension that today's guest, Andrew Lala, is very familiar with. As an international development and climate tech veteran with on-the-ground experience in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Nigeria, Andrew has seen first-hand the urgent need for farmers in developing countries to get a hold of hyper-local (and hyper-accurate) weather forecasts that empower them to adapt.

He's also seen how large, supposedly sophisticated businesses — from commodity traders to agrifood majors — are operating today without a data-first approach to weather risk mitigation.

These are all observations he's bringing to Ignitia, an AI-enabled weather intelligence company producing climate and weather intelligence tools for a dizzying array of clients, from African farmers to huge ports and logistical companies.

In this interview, he offers a blunt analysis of the weather intelligence space, explains why he thinks the market system around climate and weather data is "broken and fragmented", and gives us the behind-the-scenes story of how Ignitia became a finalist for the UN-backed AI for EW4All Innovation Challenge.

It's a must-listen for climate tech founders who want to learn from Ignitia's experiences, and for climate adaptation advocates curious about how AI can drive extreme weather resilience and preparedness within the world's most vulnerable communities.

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

Today's interviewee is betting there's room for a fresh offering targeting a particularly complex branch of the financial system: infrastructure.

Prashant Mupparapu, the founder of InfraSure, is building a platform to help infrastructure investors, owners, and their insurers navigate the rising costs and uncertainty associated with climate risk. Drawing on a 20-year career in energy and infrastructure finance, with experience at Citadel, Credit Suisse, and Blue Owl, Prashant believes his techie approach to infrastructure finance and risk management can stand out in the busy climate intelligence market.

In this conversation, he breaks down why financial institutions have traditionally downplayed resilience investments, and what innovative structures could compel increased engagement — like 'resilience credits'. He then explains the "risk gap" that InfraSure intends to fill, and why he believes tech should be an "enabler" rather than a "disruptor" in the climate-finance ecosystem.

He also talks about widening the aperture of adaptation investment, and the importance of empowering infrastructure owners to understand the pros and cons of "renting" resilience via insurance or "owning" it via hardening investments.

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

Today's guest is working on multiple fronts to make the built environment more climate resilient. Andy Love is the Co-Founder of the sustainability consultancy Love Design Studio and community interest company Shade the UK. Through these organizations, he's pushing for changes in how buildings are designed, with an eye on promoting livable, climate-adapted spaces that center the people living in them.

He joins the pod to talk about the projects he's led on the dangers of heat in the UK — and the policies and design solutions that could help people cope better. He also unpacks the barriers to cooling Britain down and even dives into this summer's big question: should Brits embrace air conditioning?

🔗Links:

Read 'Building Heat-Resilient Neighbourhoods' from Shade the UK HERE

Read the 'Overheating Adaptation Guide for Homes' HERE

Read the Cooling Roadmap for the Greater London Authority and C40 Cities HERE

Sign up to climateproof.news for more news and insights on climate adaptation finance, tech, and policy.

Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

Sustainability advocacy organization Ceres sees the storm breaking in the US$4trn municipal bond market, where cities and local governments raise cash to finance everything from new infrastructure to public transit systems.

In this episode of Climate Proofers, Steven Rothstein and Jake Rascoff from Ceres raise the climate alarm on this oft-forgotten corner of the financial system and make the case for why better climate risk disclosure from cities, states, and local agencies is now an investor (and issuer) imperative.

The conversation highlights the disconnect between known physical risks and what's actually being reported to investors, and makes the case for a standardized, forward-looking disclosure regime that can help communities attract capital for adaptation before disaster strikes.

With federal dollars for disaster response in question, insurance markets in retreat, and climate disasters growing in frequency and severity, Rothstein and Rascoff argue that municipalities can no longer afford to underplay material climate risks in their bond offerings.

If you're an investor, policymaker, or finance pro looking to better understand the climate perils facing the muni markets — this episode is for you.

🔗Links:

Read 'Leading with Transparency: A Guide to Strengthening Climate Disclosure and Resilience in the Municipal Bond Market' HERE

Read Ceres' report on insurance climate disclosure: 'The Measurement Gap: A Deep Dive into Climate Risk Reporting in the US Insurance Sector' HERE

Sign up for Ceres' next webinar on insurance HERE

Sign up to climateproof.news for more news and insights on climate adaptation finance, tech, and policy.

Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

First off, you've got the challenge of explaining to would-be clients and investors what climate adaptation actually is. Then you have to figure out what form of language moves them from curious onlookers to engaged participants.

To help deal with these obstacles, founders are on the hunt for "go-to-market Sherpas" — professionals who can guide them from the "promising idea" phase to the "commercial juggernaut" stage.

Today's guest — Anjana Agarwal — is one such "Sherpa". With her company, The Ad Hoc Group, she helps climate tech start-ups with a resilience focus navigate the complexities of regulation, procurement, and scaling in the notoriously risk-averse utility sector.

In our conversation, Anjana offers a frank diagnosis of the challenges facing adaptation tech start-ups, from mismatched language between founders and their utility buyers to political and economic barriers at the state and federal level.

She also highlights some of the company's adaptation tech clients, including Pano AI and Resilient Structures, and how they're making inroads with major utilities.

It's an episode for all you adaptation tech-heads out there, and anyone curious about how America's utilities are grappling with the blight of worsening climate extremes.

🔗Links:

Sign up to the Power Resilience Forum 2026 HERE

Learn more about The Ad Hoc Group HERE

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie@climateproof.news.

Adapt40 is the bespoke adaptation consultancy he set up in 2021, which is today engaged in projects all over the world: from Dartmoor in the UK to the islands of the Eastern Caribbean.

The '40' in 'Adapt40' comes from 2040: the year in which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted human-induced global warming would breach 1.5°C. That forecast was made back in 2018. Now, scientists believe this threshold could be crossed within the next five years.

This is bad news for humanity, as it means we have even less time to prepare and protect ourselves from the extreme weather and slow-onset climate disasters that 1.5°C entails. But it has also injected fresh urgency into Adapt40's work.

On today's episode, Ben talks about his career to date and unpacks the short, but intense, history of his consultancy. He then describes Adapt40's "participatory approach" to building resilience with local partners and explains why adaptation is more about collaboration than competition.

He also gets into the company's secret sauce — its competence with data and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) — and tells us what he really thinks about the use of AI in adaptation planning.

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**Programming Note**: Climate Proofers is taking a break this August — but will be back with a bang in September.

Reaching consensus was by no means easy. Adaptation is complex. After all, climate risks manifest in many, many ways and affect economic sectors, geographies, and populations differently. Political squabbles between countries also threatened to derail the process. Developing nations want indicators to track rich countries' financial contributions to adaptation — something the latter group would rather avoid.

In this episode, Debbie Hillier of Mercy Corps — who was on the ground at Bonn — joins to talk us through the negotiations' many twists and turns, and to unpack the value of the indicator workstream to global adaptation progress. She also gets into the weeds of the long-running — and always contentious — debate on adaptation finance, and why we must hold fast to the Paris Agreement principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities" if climate justice is to be realized.

In addition, Debbie describes her role with the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance — a coalition of nonprofits working to improve preparedness against flooding, extreme heat, and other climate shocks — and the projects in Indonesia, Jordan, and Nepal she's been working on with the group.

It's a wide-ranging conversation perfect for you policy wonks out there, and to all those curious about how adaptation planning and finance is being thought about at the highest levels.

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**Programming Note**: Climate Proofers is taking a break this August — but will be back with a bang in September.

Ok, maybe a lot more scary.

With a climate-denier in the White House, destructive wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, and the scaling back of emissions targets by rich countries, there's lots for climate policy wonks — not to mention the rest of us — to be nervous about.

Perhaps a change in strategy is needed. A different way to press home the importance of climate mitigation and adaptation that suits the febrile times. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) thinks it has just the ticket: the Climate Realism Initiative. With adaptation as a central pillar, the initiative promotes investing in national resilience, preparing for climate shocks at home and abroad, and navigating the geopolitical realities of climate change.

In this episode, Alice Hill, David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at CFR and a veteran of the Obama White House, joins to discuss the new program — and some of the controversy it has generated in climate policy circles.

Alice also shares her snap analysis of President Trump's newly signed "big, beautiful bill," which guts clean energy tax incentives and climate resilience projects, and offers her reflections on the horrific flash floods in Texas, which have claimed over 100 lives.

She then digs into why the US needs a "Manhattan Project" for climate risk modeling and much, much more investment in adaptation innovation if it is to survive and thrive.

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📚Read Alice's essay 'The Adaptation Imperative' at Foreign Affairs

📚 Learn about the Climate Realism Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations

In that time, US climate adaptation policy has been utterly transformed — and not for the better.

Today's episode — recorded at the recent Adapt Unbound 2025 conference in New York — unpacks how the Trumpian crusade against climate science, overseas aid, and the federal government writ large is undermining US — and global — climate resilience.

Jonathan Cook, formerly Senior Resilience and Adaptation Advisor at USAID, and Jainey Bavishi, formerly Deputy Administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), explore the administration's gutting of the US's adaptation initiatives and hollowing out of critical climate data infrastructure. They assess what's been lost, what can still be salvaged, and where new opportunities for action lie.

They also get into the real-world implications of losing public goods like open-source climate data, and what the retreat of federal leadership on climate adaptation means for the states, regions, and the private sector.

It's a sobering listen, but an essential one for those wanting to understand where US climate adaptation goes from here.

👀 Adapt Unbound is coming to Europe! Join public and private sector leaders shaping the future of climate adaptation and resilience in Amsterdam this October 14 & 15. Learn more HERE

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They need cold, hard cash to build up their defenses. But data from CDP — the OG environmental disclosure platform — shows a US$86bn funding shortfall for climate-resilient infrastructure. How can this gap be closed? And how can improved data help unlock capital for adaptation at the city level?

Katie Walsh, CDP's Head of Climate Finance for Cities, States, and Regions — and North America Lead — joins the pod to offer some answers.

She shares what she's learned over nearly ten years at the non-profit, reflecting on the evolution of climate disclosures at the corporate and city level and how they have helped build a picture of climate risk and opportunity. She also highlights the hard work underway to make climate data more useful for real-world decisions — from project planning to investment strategies.

Katie then break down the CDP's recent strategic shake-up and its pivot toward smarter tech and AI to boost data quality and usability.

If you're curious about the intersection of climate data, public finance, and real-world resilience, this is the episode for you.

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📚 To learn more about CDP's 2024 Global Snapshot on Cities (developed in partnership with the Global Covenant of Mayors), you can read the report here. You can find the full list of projects seeking financing and funding from the 2024 disclosure to CDP-ICLEI Track available on the CDP Open Data page. Keep an eye out for an upcoming report to be released by the Network for Greening the Financial System G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group which utilizes CDP data to demonstrate how companies are putting their adaptation and resilience into their transition plans. It will be made available on Insights - CDP. CDP's reporting window is now open - go to the CDP Portal to begin disclosing now. Our Help Center provides further resources. Join CDP for the CDP Reporting Tips for Local, State, and Regional Governments on July 15 at 1 pm ET for an overview of the questionnaire, and tips on reporting in 2025. Register here.

For Garrett Kephart, CEO and Co-Founder of Earth Finance, years of experience paddling through the Canadian wilderness and trekking the mountains of the Western US came in handy.

As a seasoned outdoorsman, Kephart learned the importance of adapting to changing environments and making decisions under pressure — lessons he's transferred over to his work building a top climate adaptation and transition strategy company.

In this episode, Kephart gives us the lowdown on Earth Finance, describing its beginnings in the heyday of the Biden administration and its subsequent evolution as corporate priorities have shifted. He talks about the recent acquisition of Climate Engine — a pioneer in spatial finance technology — and how these capabilities are helping clients better understand and respond to physical climate risks.

The conversation also unpacks how AI is transforming the consulting model, enabling faster and deeper analysis of climate risks and opportunity. Kephart offers a nuanced view on the promise and pitfalls of AI, stressing the need for "ground truth" and local engagement to validate the findings of high-tech models and data feeds.

Looking ahead, he highlights the current adaptation priorities of companies and the sectors that are already coming under pressure, while explaining how Earth Finance is positioning itself to be the one-stop shop for climate-proofing their operations.

It's a conversation that the climate consulting crowd and geospatial community won't want to miss!

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No wonder regulators are preoccupied with avoiding a repeat. One potential vector for a future crisis is unaddressed climate risk. An ever-growing barrage of extreme weather events — coupled with intensifying slow-onset events like sea-level rise and temperature variability — could disrupt bank portfolios and trigger cascading losses throughout the financial system, reviving the specter of 2008.

During the Biden administration, bank watchdogs took steps to guard lenders and savings associations from these hazards and encourage financial institutions to level up their climate risk management capabilities.

One of these regulators is today's guest, Yue 'Nina' Chen, who served as Chief Climate Risk Officer at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency from 2022 until January of this year.

In this episode, Nina shares how she built the OCC's climate risk function from the ground up, educating lenders and bank supervisors alike on the challenges that a warmer, more volatile climate poses to financial stability. We discuss her role developing and implementing the regulator's climate risk principles for large institutions — which offered first-of-its-kind guidance to Wall Street giants on climate-proofing their portfolios — and integrating climate considerations into the OCC's supervisory practices.

She also shares her thoughts on the future of bank climate risk management now the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to climate resilience efforts across the federal government and explains why she thinks lenders need to improve their modeling and analysis of physical climate threats.

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Rising oceans and worsening seaborne tempests are chipping away at our shorelines, degrading coastal ecosystems, and putting trillions of dollars of property, infrastructure, and water-based commerce at risk.

The fast-changing vulnerability of coastal economies is a nightmare for insurers in particular, which are wrestling with how to model flood and erosion risks given the climate-induced tumult.

Ocean Ledger is here to help. In this episode of Climate Proofers, Paige Roepers — CEO and Co-Founder of the geospatial analytics start-up — joins to explain how cutting-edge remote sensor tech and satellites, together with data-crunching models, are transforming our understanding of coastal risk, and unlocking new pathways for climate adaptation finance and insurance.

We plunge into Paige's eclectic personal story, from her early passion for marine biology (including an early career stint as a research diver in Indonesia) to her years in investment banking at Barclays. This unusual blend of field science and finance sparked the insight that led her to found Ocean Ledger.

We then get into the weeds of Ocean Ledger's applications for insurance and finance — and the potential for geospatial analytics to advance nature-based solutions and unleash financial innovation.

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Laurie is a highly respected champion of climate resilience, housing policy, and sustainable investment in the US — with a career that's taken her from construction projects in San Francisco to the heart of the White House.

For two years, she served under President Biden: first, as Senior Advisor for Climate Risk and Resilience, and then as a Senior Housing Policy Advisor. In these roles, she leveraged the power of the Oval Office to support nationwide resilience efforts and unlock adaptation finance.

Now, she serves as Chief Investment and Impact Officer at Partners for the Common Good, a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that provides low-cost, patient capital to low-income communities.

She's also an important voice in the effort to make Los Angeles more resilient in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires. In her role on the Blue Ribbon Commission on Climate Action and Fire Safe Recovery, set up by LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, Laurie is advising on how to build back homes, businesses, and infrastructure to better withstand fires and other catastrophes.

In today's episode, we cover a lot of ground — from the very different climate adaptation policies of Trump and Biden, to the challenges on the ground in LA, to the importance of CDFIs amid a wholesale rollback of federal funding.

Laurie even shares her thoughts on the importance of the new American Pope in providing moral leadership at a time when so little seems to be in evidence.

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It's also one of many facing a barrage of climate risks that, if left unchecked, threaten to harm its people and hobble its economy over time.

Verture is working to prevent this. The Scottish charity — formerly known as Sniffer — leverages cross-sector, cross-community collaborations to build climate resilience up and down the country.

They've got their work cut out for them.

Scotland is dealing with higher winter rainfall, an increasing number of damaging wind storms, more heat extremes, worsening drought risks…. the list goes on.

In this episode, Verture CEO Jo Kerr and Head of Climate Ready Leadership Jonny Casey talk us through this growing climate risk exposure and describe how the charity is preparing Scotland's population and economy to meet a more dangerous future.

They unpack Verture's experience working with multiple levels of government and a mishmash of stakeholders to support enduring regional adaptation partnerships — like Climate Ready Clyde and Highland Adapts —that promote local ownership and community buy-in.

Then, Jo explains the five core principles that drive Verture's collaborations, from place-based design to just resilience, while Jonny reflects on the role private finance and technology can play in supporting public sector efforts to build system-wide resilience.

For those eager to learn how a leading non-profit is driving climate resilience at the local, regional, and national scale — this is the episode for you.

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In this episode, Josh Hacker — Chief Science Officer at Jupiter Intelligence — joins to talk about how the climate risk modeling discipline has evolved in the eight-or-so years since the company's founding, and the lessons learnt along the way on the importance of transparency and accountability.

He dives into the challenges reconciling clients' appetite for actionable data with the inherent uncertainty of climate risk model outputs, and discusses how and why competition in the climate risk analytics space is hotting up.

It's a rare chance to hear from a climate scientist who also knows his way around the tech and finance spaces, too — making this a must-listen.

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Climate risks are here, and are only getting worse. To protect and prepare vulnerable communities, we need finance to rush in at speed and in scale.

Impatience Earth, as the name suggests, isn't waiting around to see this done. The UK-based nonprofit provides pro-bono advice to philanthropic funders looking to enhance their climate strategies — and get their money moving now.

On today's episode, Sarah Farrell, Climate Philanthropy Advisory Director at Impatience Earth, explains why philanthropic investment in climate resilience represents "a leap of faith" that she and her team are working to get more funders comfortable with. She speaks to the different strategies used to coax wary funders to embrace this still poorly understood niche, and explains why it's so important that progressive donors adopt a more venture capital mindset to supporting resilience initiatives.

She also shares her latest work with the nonprofit SouthSouthNorth on promoting the "Resilience Continuum", a financing framework that seeks to move donors beyond the tired adaptation-mitigation binary and channel dollars into community-level resilience for the long term.

It's a terrific conversation for all those engaged in the tough, but essential, work of moving philanthropic capital into the adaptation and resilience space.

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📰 Read the Impatience Earth / SouthSouthNorth article on the "Resilience Continuum" HERE

As Washington's top insurance official, Kuderer is responsible for overseeing the more than 800 insurers in the state and protecting policy holders from unfair practices. She's also driving her office to address climate risks to the local insurance market and championing legislation that could harden homeowners and whole communities against floods and wildfires.

In this episode, she shares how her office is tackling the mounting challenges of insurance affordability and availability in the face of climate-driven hazards. She explains her philosophy of prevention-first regulation and outlines new initiatives, including efforts to collect and analyze wildfire and non-renewal data and promote consumer education of climate threats to their insurance coverage.

Kuderer also reflects on the structural barriers to more coordinated resilience efforts, including legislative gridlock and political resistance to climate action. She shares her concerns about the weakening of federal agencies like FEMA and NOAA, and makes a strong case for the importance of state-level leadership while a climate-denier inhabits the White House.

This episode offers a front-line perspective from a top regulator confronting climate threats to the insurance system. It's essential listening for InsurTechs, NGOs, and policymakers working to meet this moment.

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In this episode of Climate Proofers, Jo explains how she led IFAD to adopt an adaptation-first agenda, shares what she learned from years as the inaugural head of the Independent Evaluation Unit at the GCF, and offers her candid thoughts on how adaptation finance can be mainstreamed across public and private financial institutions.

We also dig into Jo's concept for "resilience credits" — a system that could create investable, measurable adaptation outcomes in the Global South. She's also unsparing in her critique of current global financial rules, from capital adequacy ratios for banks to loan-loss provisions, that penalize investment in vulnerable communities. She argues that the global financial architecture must evolve to reward resilience and lays out a vision for rewriting important rulebooks like the International Financial Reporting Standards and Basel Standards to reflect adaptation and resilience impact.

It's a must-listen episode for all those working at the intersection of climate finance, development, and institutional reform.

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As part of its chaotic effort to shrink the size of government and eliminate any and all climate work by the US government, Trump's team is gutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the country's premier climate agency, abolishing grants that states and cities use to build resilience against extreme weather events, and even directing government lawyers to go after state-level laws that promote climate mitigation and adaptation.

These policies all serve to undermine US climate readiness, and run counter to another Trump administration goal — making disaster preparedness and response a state, local, and individual responsibility, instead of something led from Washington, DC.

In today's episode, climate adaptation scholar Susan Crawford reflects on Trump's anti-climate policies to date and what they mean for the country. Susan is an emeritus professor at Harvard Law School and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She writes regularly about the intersection of climate change and finance over on the Substack Moving Day. In 2009, she served as special assistant to President Obama for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy.

Beyond policy, Susan talks about the financial architecture that underpins US climate resilience: municipal bonds and insurance markets. She warns of mounting risks in the muni bond market because of the current tariff chaos, potential tax policy changes, and investors' failure to figure climate hazards into their pricing. She also flags the slow-motion collapse of affordable insurance in high climate risk areas — and explains how local governments, desperate to protect their tax bases, are often incentivized to downplay or ignore escalating threats.

Whether you're a climate finance pro, work in local government, policy development, or climate risk analysis, this episode is essential listening.

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🗞️ Sign up to Susan's newsletter Moving Day HERE.

These concrete jungles are highly exposed to extreme weather events and slow-onset climatic changes — from wildfires (Los Angeles) to floods (Nashville, Lagos, Karachi) to heatwaves (Delhi, Houston, Madrid).

This exposure is only going to increase. Roughly half the world's population live in urban areas today, but their share is due to exceed 70% by 2050.

Sonam Velani is on a mission to get cities ready for a hotter and wilder world.

Sonam is the Co-Founder of Streetlife Ventures, a specialist VC fund that's reimagining how and where we invest to build climate resilience into the bones of our cities, systems, and societies.

In this episode, she brings a sharp, systems-thinking lens to the climate challenge facing cities, drawing on her career on Wall Street, at the World Bank, and in New York's City Hall to explain what's needed to make urban environments survive and thrive in a climate-adjusted future.

She also lays out her thesis for what makes a VC-ready adaptation startup, and offers a glimpse into Streetlife's diverse portfolio of exciting early-stage companies.

Whether you're a founder, investor, or simply adaptation-curious — this episode is a must-listen.

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🗞️ Sign up to Sonam's Climate Tech Cities newsletter HERE

Over the last five years, he's worked for not one, not two, but three organizations with 'Resilience' in the title, and helped coordinate a UN-backed campaign that has brought hundreds of companies, cities, and other non-state parties together to harden our world to climate shocks — the Race to Resilience.

He joins Climate Proofers to share his professional journey in adaptation-and-resilience-land, discuss the legacy of the Race to Resilience campaign, and go deep on his current project: a new Model for Organizational Resilience.

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👉 Read Resilience First's Model for Organizational Resilience HERE

It sounds ambitious, but this is exactly what UK-based Fathom has set out to do. The flood and climate risk intelligence company recently launched its Global Flood Cat model, capable of modeling all major flood perils — from burst riverbanks to coastal storm surges. Moreover, it can quantify the financial risk of these floods to all kinds of assets. This data is invaluable to insurers, banks, and other financial institutions nervous about how more frequent and severe floods could affect their portfolios.

In today's episode, Louie sits down with Dr. Oliver Wing, Chief Scientist at Fathom, to explore how cutting-edge flood modeling is transforming how we understand — and prepare for — climate risk.

The conversation digs into where flooding happens and who gets hurt, unpacking the myriad variables that shape how floods impact real assets and financial institutions alike. Ollie also offers his frank perspective on the flood risk modeling community as a whole, explaining why transparency is the not-so-secret sauce to Fathom's success to date.

If you're curious about the intersection of climate science, risk modeling, and the pursuit of adaptation at scale, this conversation is for you.

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In this episode, Carolyn — who also serves as Associate Vice President for Economics and Policy at the Environmental Defense Fund — talks about this new initiative and shares her insights into the evolving role of insurance in climate resilience, disaster recovery, and financial protection.

She and Louie also get into the weeds of recent climate disasters, like the Los Angeles wildfires, and dive into the challenges incentivizing local governments and individuals alike to invest in climate-proofing measures. They then discuss the pressures on state-convened insurers-of-last-resort and the promise of alternative models of insurance — like parametric approaches — for addressing the growing climate protection gap.

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Are you in London on Wednesday March 19? Want to hang with Climate Adaptation Tech professionals over drinks? Then come to our networking event, co-hosted with Mazarine Climate!

Sign up here👇

https://lu.ma/tt34xqh6

At a conference in Brasilia last month, the Special Advisor on Climate Risks to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) told delegates that trillions of dollars of private money for adaptation were unlikely to materialize, and that attention should be turned instead to maximizing the finance provided by multilateral development banks (MDBs).

In today's episode, Avinash lays out his thinking on scaling adaptation finance using extra-long-term MDB loans, complete with flexible conditions — like climate-resilient debt clauses — that make it easier for developing countries to take on debt for climate-proofing purposes.

He also details innovative donor-backed financing models that reward countries for successfully completing resilience projects, a new spin on the blended finance transactions that are taking adaptation-world by storm.

Whether you're an investor, policymaker, or climate advocate, this episode has something for you.

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In today's episode, Sadie talks about the growing vulnerabilities in global supply chains, and shares how N4EA uses data, predictive analytics, and geospatial intelligence to help businesses anticipate and manage these risks before they spiral out of control.

Louie and Sadie then discuss the need for greater collaboration between companies on supply chain resilience, the importance of a systems-thinking approach to climatic and extreme weather challenges, and how shifts in trade relationships and political instability are intertwined with climate-related risks.

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It now aspires to become the global epicenter for climate solutions, too. In this episode Stephen Hammer, CEO of the New York Climate Exchange, talks to Louie about this new cross-sector, multi-stakeholder center— intended to become the preeminent hub for climate mitigation and adaptation R&D in the world, not only when it comes to tech, but as it relates to public policy, education, and environmental justice, too. Just last week, the Exchange unveiled new renderings of the US$700mn, 400,000-square foot campus on Governors Island in New York Harbor that will be its home from 2029.

Stephen shares the Exchange's vision for transforming Governors Island and pushing the boundaries of climate innovation. He also touches on how the Exchange could contribute to New York's economic engine and act as another generator of jobs, expertise, and high-tech startups.

There's also a discussion on harnessing the "shiny new object" of AI for climate solutions, and as a way to attract talent into the climate space.

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In this episode, Clare Ballantine, Head of the Howden Foundation, and Isona Shibata, Head of International Programs at Ashden, unpack the role of philanthropic capital in building resilience for climate-vulnerable communities in the Global South.

They discuss the urgency of funding locally-led adaptation solutions, the power of anticipatory action, and how smart financial innovations — like micro parametric insurance — are protecting lives and livelihoods. Plus, a candid look at the challenges of attracting investment to adaptation and why philanthropy must embrace a venture capital mindset to make a difference.

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David has been at the forefront of climate risk management and disclosure since the first rush of industry- and UN-led initiatives swept across the financial sector in the run-up to COP26.

Over many years working with the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI), he had a front row seat to how banks and institutional investors wrestled with the implications of climate change on their businesses and the wider economy.

Now, he's leading his own global consultancy focused on sustainability challenges: D. A. Carlin & Company. Together with his team, David is helping central banks, financial institutions, and entire governments get to grips with climate risk management and disclosure.

In this episode of Climate Proofers, David sits down with Louie to offer his candid assessment of the state of climate-related financial disclosures, and explain why he thinks mandated reporting alone isn't enough to drive essential action on adaptation and resilience.

He then digs into the evolving climate-financial regulatory landscape in light of the Trump administration's harsh attitude towards environmental programs and Europe's wide-ranging effort to streamline its own sustainability rules.

Beyond regulation, David shares his thoughts on market-driven shifts in the climate risk landscape, and his experiences working with climate risk startups including Climate X and Climate Aligned, offering his perspective on what makes for a successful company in this rapidly growing space.

Check out David's Sustainability Digest HERE.

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It's a question Chris Goolgasian, Director of Climate Research and portfolio manager at the $1.2trn investment company Wellington Management, has devoted himself to in recent years.

Chris oversees an investment strategy focused on stocks that should thrive as the world works to become more climate resilient — particularly those from companies that are addressing key climate risks: heat, drought, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, water scarcity, and sea level rise.

In this episode, he describes Wellington's approach to adaptation investment, talks about the challenges distinguishing signal from noise when it comes to picking adaptation stocks, and the similarities and differences relative to climate transition investing.

Chris then also shares some of his long-term predictions for climate-driven shifts in the economy, from the rise of subsidized air conditioning to the future pricing of water. These mega-trends could make, or break, entire sectors of the economy. Now's the time to get wise to them.

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Jorge Gastelumendi, Senior Director at the Atlantic Council's Climate Resilience Center, certainly thinks so. He joins Climate Proofers to talk about the newly renamed center, which has an exciting mission to reach one billion people with resilience solutions.

Sounds hard, right? Jorge breaks down the three strategic pillars of the center, and its work so far engaging with the video games industry and promoting Chief Heat Officers around the world.

He also shares his observations of a project close to his heart — Peru's National Carbon Registry — explaining how this sort of initiative can help restore credibility and integrity to carbon markets, which have potential to channel millions of dollars into adaptation and mitigation projects.

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The multiple blazes are also highlighting the frightening potential for fire risk to rip through the financial system, wrecking homeowners, insurers, and government budgets in the process.

In today's episode, Frank Frievalt, Director of the Wildland-Urban Interface FIRE Institute at Cal Poly, discusses the changing nature of wildfires and urban conflagrations under climate change, and the challenges mitigating their physical and financial risks.

Frank shares his professional insights on how the warming climate is contributing to fiercer fires and the difficulties motivating wildfire risk mitigation among vulnerable communities.

He also offers insights on the transmission mechanisms through which growing wildfire risks could spark a new financial crisis.

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But needing is one thing. Getting is another.

Julia Kumari Drapkin is pioneering a new way of collecting and analyzing climate risk data with her company ISeeChange. The startup gathers crowdsourced images and data from residents directly impacted by floods, storms, heat waves and the like, and transforms the pixels and bits into actionable information with its AI-powered software.

In this episode, she explains how this fusion of human- and AI-powered data yields insights that can inform the development of climate-resilient infrastructure and help finetune local climate risk responses.

Julia also opines on the importance of community engagement when it comes to climate-proofing neighborhoods, and how to build trust in climate risk communications.

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Extreme weather shocks may be on track to inflict some US$560bn or so of losses on listed companies every year by 2035, but so far very little early investor money is going into adaptation and resilience (A&R) solutions.

That's according to new analysis by Tailwind Climate, an adaptation-focused advisory and investment firm, which last week released a 112-page playbook on A&R tech and financing.

In this episode of Climate Proofers, Emilie Mazzacurati — Tailwind's Co-Founder — joins to discuss the playbook's contents, and some of its findings on government, consumer, and corporate spending on climate-proofing goods and activities.

She also shares what A&R solutions have got her excited, and ideas on how to unlock many more millions of dollars for startups and innovations in this space.

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​However, climate-related disasters will not go away just because the federal government refuses to accept their root causes. There is, and will continue to be, a need for policies, finance, and innovation to address climate impacts to communities and businesses, and to adapt to higher temperatures and more frequent weather extremes.

​How will climate adaptation and resilience evolve under the new administration? How could state and local governments step up to better climate-proof their constituents? And how might private investors and startups dedicated to adaptation and resilience adjust their strategies in a transformed policy space?

These questions and more were answered by an expert panel at the first Climate Proof Adaptation Salon, held in New York City on December 4. This edited recording of that conversation is bursting with insights and opinion on the path ahead, with a fair dose of optimism mixed in despite the rather ominous tone emanating from the Trump transition team.

Speakers:

​Sharai Lewis-Gruss, Co-owner and Principal, Two Degrees Adapt

​Jeff Schlegelmilch, Director at National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Earth Institute, Columbia University

​Daniel Murphy, Risk & Resilience Specialist, World Economic Forum

​Stacy Swann, Resilient Earth Capital

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Canada and the US are battling blazes more often and for longer periods. This fall, wildfires have burnt on East and West Coasts alike. Even New York City, that vaunted concrete jungle, has succumbed.

The increase in frequency and ferocity of these disasters is one of climate change's most harrowing consequences, and is spurring governments and businesses to do more to fight back.

Today's Climate Proofer is part of this effort. Jonathan Bowers is the founder of Path & Focus, a Canada-based firetech company committed to improving access to actionable wildfire data and analytics.

He talks with Louie about the scale of the wildfire challenge in Canada, the value in making wildfire maps and simulations available to communities and government authorities at speed, and the gaps in the current firetech ecosystem.

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While the conference produced a controversial new climate finance goal, this had little to offer developing countries working to climate-proof their populations. On the other hand, agreement on a way forward for the Global Goal on Adaptation, a central plank of the Paris Agreement, offers hope that countries will be better able to measure adaptation progress – and demand the finance, expertise, and technologies they need to round out their national adaptation plans.

In this episode, Louie is joined by Ana Mulio Alvarez, a researcher focused on the UNFCCC, adaptation, and Loss and Damage at the international think tank E3G. Ana was on the ground at Baku for the entirety of the Baku summit, and has unparalleled insight into the adaptation and resilience negotiations that took place.

She unpacks her adaptation wins and fails of COP29, and offers her expert opinion on whether these summits are still worth the struggle.

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By the same token, they shouldn't sleep on adaptation. Investors who bet on climate-proofed companies can lower the overall exposure of their portfolios to worsening storms, floods, and wildfires. They can also capture underpriced opportunities by investing in those businesses providing adaptation goods and services to global markets.

Impax Asset Management is an investment company that gets this. In today's episode, Julie Gorte — Senior Vice President for Sustainable Investing — talks about how she engages with the adaptation and resilience theme, and how her company has gone about engaging with portfolio companies on their own climate resilience.

As a bonus, we also unpack the potential implications of Trump 2.0 on the climate investment space in the US, and touch on ways in which political discontent can harm efforts to build resilience.

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Nakita Devlin is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ric, a parametric insurance startup that caters to individuals caught in rainfall-induced flooding events. She talks with Louie about the current vogue for this type of insurance, why established carriers and startups alike are excited by its potential, and the tech and policy hurdles – and opportunities – she faces.

Nakita also discusses how parametric insurance fits in with the broader ecosystem of climate solutions, and the importance of community-based resilience.

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Enter Faura, an InsurTech startup co-founded by today's guest, Valkyrie Holmes. Her team have pioneered a new way to produce "survivability" assessments – a measure of a property's resilience to natural disasters – that has caught the attention of both insurers and real estate professionals looking to navigate an increasingly hazardous market.

Valkyrie unpacks the concept of "survivability" and its importance to those writing and seeking insurance, and explains how Faura's assessments empower homeowners to proactively reduce their own risk. She also reflects on the insurance industry's appetite for innovation and the challenges involved piloting a disruptive startup in a heavily regulated and complex sector.

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The metropolis has to defend itself against these shocks. As the engine of the UK economy, anything that happens to the capital reverberates throughout the country. Hence the London Climate Resilience Review, a first-of-its-kind analysis commissioned by Mayor Sadiq Khan and chaired by today's guest, Emma Howard Boyd CBE.

The Review, published earlier this year, assesses the UK capital's climate resilience and makes over 50 recommendations on preparing the city for worsening climate impacts. Emma puts the Review in context, takes us through some of the top recommendations, and highlights the importance of joined-up governance and the sharing of best practices across cities to building long-lasting resilience.

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Why not call Adam Freed? Today's Climate Proofers guest is a Principal at Bloomberg Associates, an organization which provides adaptation and resilience consulting to Mayors and their staff – pro bono.

Adam breaks down the reasons why cities are susceptible to climate shocks – from outdated infrastructure to rapid urban growth – and the changes in governance and governing that could help scale resilience solutions.

He also shares some success stories, like London's flood prevention efforts and Phoenix's ambitious shade plan, and touts the opportunities for governments, businesses, and startups that are piling into the urban resilience space.

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Questions? Comments? Email Louie at louie.woodall@loremedia.info 

Hence the importance of accelerators: programs that support the rapid growth of new technologies for addressing climate change. Michael Jacobs oversees the IBM Sustainability Accelerator, which works to scale climate solutions from nonprofits and governmental agencies using IBM technology and AI know-how.

To date, the IBM Sustainability Accelerator has supported 15 global projects across three active cohorts focused on sustainable agriculture, clean energy, and water management. The focus of its latest cohort? Resilient cities.

Michael joins Climate Proofers to discuss how the Accelerator got its start, how participants benefit, and the massive potential of AI to build more climate-resilient cities.

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Alan Leung works at the global financial institution Macquarie Group as head of the threat intelligence team, and writes the informative newsletter Securing Our Climate, which focuses on the intersection of climate change, security, geopolitics, and finance. He joins Climate Proofers to discuss the climate impacts he believes could upend global security, highlight the new geopolitical fault lines that could open up as the world warms, and describe the collision of climate change and corporate operational risk management.

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However, in the rush to develop effective climate risk analytics, we may be trying to force cat models to do things they weren't designed to – and promoting a flawed way of thinking about the link between climate change and financial loss in the bargain.

Thomas Mortlock, from reinsurance broker and risk solutions company Aon, joins Climate Proofers to explain what cat models can and can't do, unpack the relationship between climate risk and insured losses, and get into the knotty problem of slow-onset events, like sea-level rise.

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Prior to this role, she served nine years with the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent body that advises the UK government on its climate actions and researches the country's preparedness for climate shocks.

Kathryn talks about the role of climate adaptation in wildlife habitat conservation, the difficult trade-offs involved when it comes to preserving ecosystems, and her experiences working as Head of Adaptation at the CCC.

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As Managing Partner at Climate Adaptive Infrastructure, a fund dedicated to climate resilient, low-carbon projects, Bill and his team have pioneered a unique methodology for assessing potential investments based on their ability to withstand the 'triple threat' posed by climate change.

In this episode of Climate Proofers, Bill takes us through the fund's process, talks about some of his recent investments, and offers his take on the current state-of-play in climate-aware infrastructure investment.

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Climate Resilience For All is a non-profit dedicated to the protection of women and vulnerable communities from extreme heat and all its impacts. Their tagline is: "When women are climate resilient, we will all be climate resilient," reflecting a belief that by supporting women against heat impacts we can strengthen communities as a whole.

Kathy Baughman McLeod, the CEO of Climate Resilience For All, joins today's episode to talk about how the group came about, the importance of promoting heat resilience among women, and what financial solutions are proving effective at supporting vulnerable populations.

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As Executive Director of the Climate Resilience Academy at the University of Miami, he's responsible for driving problem-driven research and education on climate adaptation and resilience and training the next generation of climate proofers.

In this episode, he talks about the idea of "resilience dividends" — the spillover benefits that come from investing in resilience — and the ways in which they can be captured and monetized by private and public actors.

He also explores why Miami has emerged as a hub for climate resilience companies and takes us through some of the adaptation innovations being pioneered in southern Florida.

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Koh now leads The Lightsmith Group, a global investment platform laser-focused on opportunities in the emerging adaptation economy. The private equity firm boasts a range of investments in climate-proofing technologies covering agriculture, wildfire, water, and more.

He sits down with Louie to talk about how the adaptation investment landscape has transformed in recent years, to describe Lightsmith's investment thesis, and explain why investing in climate adaptation is a far surer bet than wagering on interest rates, inflation – and even Taylor Swift's next boyfriend!

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John Robinson, a technology investor with Mazarine Ventures, joins this week's Climate Proofers to talk about his research into CAT, and go over the findings of Mazarine's surveys of early-stage investors on this crucial theme.

Louie and John also discuss water-related climate adaptation tech, one of the hottest CAT subcategories, and dive into the market initiatives, public policies, and regulatory efforts that could spur greater engagement by VCs in climate-proofing activities.

Learn more about Mazarine Ventures at www.mazarineventures.com

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However, the continent's vulnerability has also made it a hotbed of climate adaptation. Thousands are joining (or starting) businesses to climate-proof the continent – and investors are taking note.

In this week's episode, Louie is joined by Maëlis Carraro, managing partner at The Catalyst Fund, a pre-seed VC fund and accelerator that supports African climate adaptation startups. They discuss how Catalyst started, the importance of adaptation-focused funds, and what startups are making waves throughout the African continent.

They also get into the landscape for blended finance and what needs to be done to crowd more private capital into climate adaptation companies.

Learn more about The Catalyst Fund at www.thecatalystfund.com.

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Inflation and the crowding of high-risk areas contributed to the red ink, but extreme weather events were also a factor. These are due to become more frequent and severe because of climate change.

Nancy Watkins specializes in climate resilience, insurtech and catastrophic property risk at Milliman, the actuarial consultancy. She joins Climate Proofers to discuss the headwinds facing the US insurance market and the resilience measures that individuals, communities, and public authorities could take to ease the emerging affordability and availability crisis.

We also examine the role of catastrophe (or 'cat') models in the insurance industry, and their importance in a climate-transformed world.

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Experts from tech, finance, and policy held forth on topics ranging from how to prepare cities for climate change to building industry-wide collaborations.

Louie was tapped to moderate the last panel of the day on closing the adaptation capital gap, with adaptation veterans Emilie Mazzacurati (Tailwind Climate), Maëlis Carraro (Catalyst Fund), Anish Patel (Yamaha Motor Ventures), and Sonam Velani (Streetlife Ventures).

Thanks to the good folk at Unbound Summits, this week's podcast features a recording of that panel, so you can hear direct from these big hitters on what's behind the adaptation finance gap and how to close it.

An edited transcript of the panel is also available here for those who prefer to read.

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Kit England is no stranger to local adaptation planning. Currently the senior climate resilience and adaptation specialist at Paul Watkiss Associates, Kit has over ten years' experience in adaptation planning and implementation, most recently through the Pathways2Resilience program set up under the EU's Climate Change Adaptation Mission.

He joins Louie on the podcast to talk about his experiences and share his thoughts on the type of coordination and collaboration needed to create joined-up adaptation plans at the local level and beyond.

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S& Global Rating's Dr Paul Munday has been at the forefront of research into company-level climate adaptation plans, and recently co-authored an in-depth report on the current state of play.

This found that just 21% of companies have adaptation plans, and that less than half of these have implementation timelines of 10 years or less.

Is this evidence that too few companies are taking climate risks seriously? A sign that adaptation and resilience are still emerging concepts in the private sector? Or a reflection of the difficulties involved with putting together climate risk assessments and articulating effective responses?

In this episode, Paul and Louie discuss the findings of the report and unpack additional research by S&P on sovereign and municipal climate risks.

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This problem explains the current mania for adaptation and resilience taxonomies. These are systems for classifying activities and investments that support climate-proofing efforts. Nation-states have produced taxonomies that touch on adaptation in the past, but this year has seen a rush of tailor-made taxonomies from nonprofits and private entities alike enter the public domain.

One new entrant, poised to make its official debut later this year, is the Climate Bonds Initiative's Resilience Taxonomy — which has been designed to help companies structure debt instruments that clearly support adaptation and resilience goals.

In this episode, Ujala Qadir of the Climate Bonds Initiative joins to discuss the Taxonomy, why it's needed, and how it could reshape the adaptation and resilience investment landscape.

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However, being new, the climate adaptation technology space faces challenges. For one, plenty in the venture market are yet to get their arms around the concept of adaptation. For another, working out what business models are viable remains a work in progress.

In this episode, Seb Tranæus of Rally Cap VC, a venture fund focused on climate adaptation, discusses these challenges, riffs on some of his favorite startups in the space, and reflects on how the startup and policy ecosystems differ on either side of the Atlantic.

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However, adaptation and resilience have arguably been underrepresented in the blizzard of paper coming out of regulators' offices.

Craig Davies, CEO at the climate consultancy Cadlas, joins Climate Proofers to talk about the state of financial regulation vis-a-vis adaptation, and what regulatory developments could help unlock the capital necessary to power the fledgling adaptation economy.

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Morgan Richmond at the Climate Policy Initiative, an independent nonprofit, is a seasoned pro when it comes to tracking climate finance flows. She heads up the Initiative's adaptation finance agenda, and recently put together its State and Trends in Climate Adaptation Finance report.

Louie and Morgan discuss the report's findings and the hard work of properly accounting for climate-proofing capital flows, plus the role of different financial organizations in constructing the adaptation finance ecosystem.

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We get into the nitty-gritty of the projects she's working on right now and go over the data, education, and technical needs of financial institutions when it comes to embedding climate resilience in their lending and investing activities.

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Eugene Montoya, a Miami native and climate finance expert, talks about how his career led to coastal resilience advocacy. He describes his work with the Waterfront Alliance, a non-profit engaging stakeholders on the use and protection of coastal regions, how waterfront resilience projects are and can be funded, and unpacks the burgeonining topic of blue finance.

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Sabrina Nagel, Adaptation & Resilience Finance Lead with the UN High-Level Climate Champions and Global Policy & Finance Advisor at the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, talks about shifting the financial industry's perceptions of adaptation investing and describes what policy and regulatory levers can be pulled to get more private capital into climate-proofing activities.

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