The price of fragility: From climate risk to economic security and resilience

When: Tuesday 06 October 2026 | 10:15 - 11:00

Format: Panel Discussion

Climate change is a growing macroeconomic problem, and the costs cannot be ignored. Disrupted supply chains, sovereign debt under strain, insurance markets retreating from entire regions, and fiscal systems overwhelmed in the places least equipped to cope. Yet capital flows into climate resilience remain chronically misallocated: concentrated in bankable, low-risk contexts while fragile and conflict-affected settings, where climate stress and instability compound each other, remain chronically underfinanced by instruments designed for a different world. This session makes the economic case for investing in resilience, examines what it takes to get capital to where the need is greatest, and asks the harder question: on whose terms is that investment arriving, and who decides?

Guiding Questions: 

• The economic case for climate resilience investment is well-documented — so why isn't it shifting decisions? What is actually blocking the translation from evidence to action?
• Which public financing mechanisms are genuinely working in fragile and conflict-affected settings, and what made them possible where others failed?
• As private capital scales up in climate finance, how do we prevent it concentrating where it's easiest to deploy, and ensure communities bearing the greatest climate costs have real agency over how resilience finance reaches them?

Speakers:

• Tonni Brodber, Head of Secretariat, Women's Peace & Humanitarian Fund (WPHF)
• Gloria Womitso, Head of Humanitarian Insurance, African Risk Capacity Ltd
• Christoph Kuhn, Deputy Director General, Projects Directorate, European Investment Bank (EIB)
• Kate Levick, Executive Director, Earth Capital Nexus

Moderated by Lauren Herzer Risi, Senior Fellow and Director, Stimson Center

Return to the BCSC 2026 Agenda.