COP30 in Belém, Brazil, concluded with a sharpened focus on bridging the gap between climate ambition and the finance required to deliver it. Adaptation and resilience, or A&R, moved decisively into the spotlight, with countries calling for scaled-up and predictable funding to protect vulnerable communities and ensure that pledges translate into implementation.
Parties supported proposals to at least triple adaptation finance by the mid 2030s, while multilateral development banks reaffirmed commitments to mobilise significantly more capital for resilience-focused infrastructure, nature-based solutions and early warning systems. A broad coalition of stakeholders also endorsed a forward-looking roadmap to align policy and investment signals, supporting a just, orderly and resilient transition.
Despite mixed reactions to formal negotiation outcomes, momentum for climate action remains firm, and progress is increasingly expected to arise from collaborations across finance, business, philanthropy and government.
Ecosperity Conversations, held on 11 November at the Singapore Pavilion at COP30, examined how adaptation and resilience can shift from being viewed as a defensive cost to becoming a strategic lever for long-term value creation.
Significant barriers stand between capital flows and adaptation projects, including inconsistent data, capability gaps at project level and the difficulty of measuring returns on resilience investments. Currently, less than 2 percent of private climate finance reaches adaptation initiatives, which represents substantial untapped potential across the investment spectrum from institutional investors to philanthropic capital.
Speakers highlighted the pressing need to improve data quality, strengthen bankability and develop frameworks that turn diffuse long-term benefits into predictable financial returns.
“Adaptation and resilience isn't an optional future here. It's a key part of current-day enterprise value that we need to address.” Rebecca Mikula-Wright, Chief Executive Officer of Asia Investor Group on Climate Change (AIGCC), urged during her presentation.
Companies that embed resilience into assets and operations are beginning to see real financial benefits. Insurance markets are increasingly pricing asset-level resilience, and stronger engineering measures can reduce premiums over time. The discussion highlighted examples including resilient commercial assets in Hong Kong and Vietnam, and critical facilities such as hospitals in the United States.
Investor interest in resilience-themed financial instruments continues to grow. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s resilience bond, certified under the Climate Bonds Initiative, was noted as an example of adaptation-linked financing gaining traction. Taxonomies are helping to standardise definitions and guide investor confidence.
Carbon markets are also evolving toward higher integrity projects with adaptation co-benefits. These projects attract stronger buyer demand, although price uplifts remain uneven. Linking voluntary and compliance markets and establishing clear valuation for resilience co-benefits will be essential to achieve scale.
Insurance innovation, particularly through parametric products, provides timely payouts for acute climate events, but addressing chronic climate risks will require long term asset planning and forward-looking risk curves shared across insurers, investors and asset owners.
Policy continues to play an enabling role. National Adaptation Plans, sectoral transition plans, granular public risk data, consistent disclosures under frameworks such as the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) and Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and regional taxonomies can help unlock institutional capital. Blended finance and public private partnerships will also be essential to derisk early projects and crowd in private investment.
Leslie Johnston, CEO of Laudes Foundation, emphasised that philanthropy, despite its limited scale, can play a significant catalytic role by building funding capacity, piloting tools such as parametric insurance, influencing policy rules and advancing just transitions where communities hold agency. She referenced the Foundation’s partnership with the AIGCC and the Just Transition Finance Lab created with the London School of Economics.
Panellists called on companies to embed resilience into operations and supply chains through comprehensive risk analysis and scenario planning. Scaling these efforts will require stronger public-private partnerships, progressive policy frameworks and innovative risk-sharing mechanisms.
The conclusion was clear. Adaptation must be reframed as an investment in security, productivity and profitability. Closing the resilience gap will depend on integrating mitigation and adaptation, advancing data and standards, pricing resilience co-benefits and coordinating efforts across borders and supply chains. Organisations must use near-term tools to protect value today while building long-term resilience that creates value at scale.
The sentiment for an all-systems, collaborative approach to climate action was echoed in Ecosperity’s second Ecosperity Conversations session at COP30, on 13 November, which focused on the role of transition planning.
In his Opening Remarks, Dr Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), emphasised the importance of transition planning and how the roles of corporate and policymakers can converge and ease the process.
Referencing the High Level Expert Group on the Net Zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities (HLEG)'s report “Integrity Matters: Net Zero commitments by Businesses, Financial Institutions, Cities and Regions” launched at COP27, which laid out clear recommendations for corporates to establish practical and credible transition plans, he presented four key building blocks that can help corporates successfully execute said plans:
“We need to bring these different elements together and not just leave it to governments alone to declare a target, and not just leave it on the shoulders of corporations and their boards to take that responsibility forward,” he urged.
Dr Ben Caldecott, Director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Group and Chair of the Advisory Group of the International Transition Plan Network, presented findings from two newly launched ITPN papers. He explained how transition plans are increasingly being used to mobilise transition finance and how sectoral plans can inform credible private sector strategies.
Transition planning has moved from a niche disclosure requirement to a strategic imperative. Because climate risk is increasingly understood as systemic, credible transition plans are becoming central to long-term value creation.
Panellists noted that credible plans require strong governance and board oversight, integration of climate into corporate strategy, target setting over multiple time horizons, capital expenditure aligned with these targets and transparent disclosures supported by independent assurance.
Marisa Drew, Chief Sustainability Officer at Standard Chartered, highlighted that Singapore encourages financial institutions not to divest from hard to abate sectors but instead to help guide them through credible transition plans. This approach sustains influence over real economy outcomes and ensures vital sectors retain access to capital needed for decarbonisation.
Panellists emphasised that public policy must keep pace with the complexity of the transition. They highlighted parallels between Singapore’s sustainable development approach and Japan’s Green Transformation strategy. Singapore combines top-down energy system modelling with bottom-up industry engagement, while Japan finances its transition through sovereign GX bonds, supported by both incentives and mandates.
Both models recognise that while global goals are shared, credible pathways must reflect national and sectoral realities.
“To enable hard-to-abate sectors to transition, we have to bring the supply and demand sides, the policy frameworks, test beds into alignment along with the commercial impetus, to accelerate the transition pathway,” commented Kyung-Ah Park, Chief Sustainability Officer of Temasek. Technologies such as green hydrogen or fully-sustainable aviation fuel remain several times more expensive than conventional options, which means adoption must be sequenced as economics improve.
She highlighted the Singapore Sustainable Aviation Fuel pilot, which brought together airlines, Changi Airport, policymakers and carbon credit providers. Through book-and-claim and carbon credit monetisation, the pilot aggregated early demand, supported a national SAF mandate of 3 to 5 per cent by 2030, enabled Singapore Airlines to set an SAF target and contributed to the creation of the Green Fuel Buyers Coalition with the World Economic Forum and GenZero.
Panellists identified government-backed markers of what good looks like, policy stability and blended finance as essential to support credible transition pathways. Mechanisms such as contracts for difference, price gap support and end to end supply chain programmes can help de-risk early investments and accelerate adoption.
The panel concluded that when investors, lenders, companies and policymakers align on credible and sector specific transition pathways, supported by stable policy, interoperable standards and risk-sharing finance, the result is faster decarbonisation, lower systemic risk and a broader opportunity set. As these frameworks mature, transition increasingly becomes a competitive advantage rather than a compliance requirement.