The Resilience Opportunity Unlocking Climate Resilience through Public Private Collaboration 2025

Both top-down and bottom-up analyses converge on a consistent insight – an estimated $320–500 billion per year will be required by 2050 to deliver large-scale climate resilience infrastructure suitable for public-private collaboration. As climate resilience gradually moves from planning to implementation, the private sector is increasingly positioned to contribute beyond internal risk management. Participating in system-wide solutions that deliver both public and private value represents one of the largest untapped opportunities in the climate resilience space. Capturing this opportunity will require a focused effort to identify potential business value from individual private-sector actors and carefully design bankable projects to align public and private incentives.Required annual investment for large-scale climate resilience infrastructure for collaboration in 2030 and 2050 in $, billionsFIGURE 1 Top-down estimation Bottom-up estimation 330–500 240–370320–400 230–320 2030 2050 2030 2050110–1 5090–11030–6060–90 120–1 40 140–1 70Drought and water scarcity solutions Coastal and riverine flood solutions Extreme wind resilience solutions Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) analysis. What makes collaboration on climate resilience different from traditional public-private partnerships?BOX 1 While public-private partnerships (PPPs) have traditionally been used to finance and deliver infrastructure, especially in sectors like transport, energy and water, they typically involve excludable and/or rival services, where users can be charged for access (e.g. tolls, tariffs) and private operators receive predictable returns. In contrast, many climate resilience projects deliver public goods in the economic sense, i.e. non-excludable and non-rival, such as flood protection, early warning systems or urban cooling. These benefits are widely shared and difficult to monetize directly, and often accrue over long timeframes through avoided losses or improved system resilience. Moreover, climate resilience challenges cut across jurisdictions, sectors and stakeholder groups, requiring coordination well beyond what standard PPP models are designed to manage. Due to these factors, climate resilience collaborations often require more flexible and blended approaches. Rather than replicating standard PPP mechanisms, they benefit from a wider mix of private-sector interests, public grants, concessional finance, risk-sharing tools, and stakeholder engagement. Success depends not just on financial structuring, but on monetizing resilience value, developing co-benefits, aligning incentives, building trust, and delivering resilience outcomes at scale. The Resilience Opportunity: Unlocking Climate Resilience through Public-Private Collaboration 9