Building a Global Adaptation Economy
Key information
- Date
- Venue
- SOAS, University of London
- Room
- Alumni Lecture Theatre
About this event
In the ‘beyond 1.5°C’ world, transformative adaptation determines future value for every asset, economy, community, and enterprise. As Singapore’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, the GIC, asserts ‘adaptation is the inevitable investment’.
The Adaptation Economy Imperative
The challenge is not whether but how in the face of multiple headwinds. Governments are fiscally constrained and embracing short-term priorities. Markets are not adequately rewarding adaptation solutions businesses due to mispriced climate and nature risk and policy distortions. Urgently needed are the enabling economic conditions that reward innovators, businesses and investors in delivering, at scale, affordable adaptation solutions.
Needed is a global ‘adaptation economy’ that will provide the opportunities to invest in adaptation to protect and drive future financial and societal value. The adaptation economy is defined in the ‘Rise of the Adaptation Economy’ released in Sao Paulo on the occasion of Brazilian COP30 Presidency by Morphosis, Fundação Getulio Vargas and The Paulson Institute, supported by the Instituto Itausa, as the ‘activities, policies and institutions that deliver the goods, services and systems that advance inclusive prosperity in a climate-impacted world’.
Session Framing
This session, co-hosted by the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance and Morphosis will explore the key features of adaptation economies and the actions needed to make them happen by policy-makers, regulators, innovators, and market actors.
In particular, the session will address inter alia the following questions:
- Does transformative adaptation require a ‘whole economy’ approach, and if so what might that look like, conceptually and illustratively?
- How might a future adaptation economy be different from today’s global economy in a future world severely disrupted by climate change.
- How can policy and regulatory action create markets that reward adaptation solution businesses and attract commercial capital.
- How can the international climate negotiations and associated action agenda best embrace and catalyze adaptation markets and economies.
Header image credit: Geranimo via Unsplash.
