Strengthening City Resilience

Strengthening urban resilience and building the infrastructure to protect against the impacts of natural disasters and climate change is a multibillion dollar agenda. It is clear that the public sector alone cannot provide the necessary funding and unless we find effective ways to include the private sector in this calculation, a resilient future for our cities will remain elusive. This panel discussion organized by the City Resilience Program focuses precisely on how to mobilize private sector for city resilience financing. We will learn that private institutional investors are ready to bet on a more resilient future, as long as the risk and return profile of the investment opportunity is appropriate. Financial advisors will point out that cities themselves sit on a wealth of assets that can be leveraged to make any investment profitable and attractive, if only we could build the capacity of cities to better present and structure proposed deals. Through events like this one, CRP seeks to create the right ecosystem to bring investors and city leaders together and to speak the same language. The focus is practical and action-oriented, to discuss concrete investment opportunities and how to balance the interests of the public and the private sector. The aim is to empower cities to expand their financing options, and to build a transparent pipeline of bankable urban resilient projects that can be financed.