The Resilience Opportunity Unlocking Climate Resilience through Public Private Collaboration 2025

Six archetypes for private-sector actors to scale climate resilience3 To clarify the business value and provide pathways for action, six practical archetypes are defined for private-sector involvement in climate resilience collaborations. These archetypes span the spectrum of projects focusing on risk/ cost avoidance and those with commercial returns, each aligned with different strategic objectives, value realization models and potential collaboration mechanisms (Table 1): Archetype 1: Joint protection for own operations Companies co-invest in climate resilience infrastructure (e.g. flood barriers, heat mitigation) or services (e.g. workforce training) that directly protect their physical assets, facilities or workforce to enhance business and operational resilience. These investments are often triggered by site-level risk assessments and integrated into business continuity or capital expenditure (CapEx) planning. Archetype 2: Joint investment in supply chain resilience Private actors support climate resilience measures that secure key suppliers, logistics infrastructure or distribution channels (e.g. agri-food companies invest in upstream cocoa sourcing). This may involve working with governments or local partners to maintain the resilience of agricultural zones and practices, transport corridors or industrial clusters and avoid supply chain disruptions. Archetype 3: Revenue stream from adaptation benefits Businesses deliver services or infrastructure with climate adaptation benefits that have a direct customer or payment mechanism (e.g. payment for ecosystem services, insurance tied to resilient assets, use-based fees for resilient infrastructure). Archetype 4: Monetization of co-benefits Climate resilience actions that generate marketable environmental or social outcomes as co-benefits (e.g. carbon credits, sustainable agriculture products, biodiversity tourism) offer new revenue streams for the developers. Success depends on measurable outcomes and access to functional markets or certification systems. Archetype 5: Asset value uplift from climate resilience Investments in climate resilience can create or raise the long-term value of land, real estate, tourism zones or commercial developments by improving environmental conditions, safety or liveability. This archetype harnesses resilience to unlock economic activity or property value gains. Archetype 6: Collaboration for diffused economic benefits This archetype focuses on private-sector participation in climate resilience initiatives that deliver broad societal and economic benefit, for example by maintaining market stability, protecting community livelihoods or enhancing basic service continuity. While the financial returns to the private actors may be indirect, they are critical to sustaining demand, enabling long-term operations and preserving economic ecosystems in climate- vulnerable areas. The realization model is still nascent and under development. Some models like the Adaptation Benefit Mechanism (ABM) illustrate how structured, verifiable outcomes, like certified adaptation benefits (CABs), can provide a new asset class and financing pathway to align public, private and community interests in advancing shared resilience. These six archetypes involve collaboration with governments, donors and multilaterals in the investment and delivery of climate resilience outcomes. While varying in complexity and return profiles, all require alignment between public mandates and private incentives. An illustration of different archetypes can be found in Figure 2.Six archetypes – each with different motivations and business values – are defined to guide actions. Investments in climate resilience can create or raise the long-term value of land, real estate, tourism zones or commercial developments by improving environmental conditions, safety or liveability. The Resilience Opportunity: Unlocking Climate Resilience through Public-Private Collaboration 10