【COP30 Side-Event】UNEP ARIC (Adaptation and Resilience Investors Collaborative)“Investors Resilience Challenge introduction: Mobilizing Private Finance for Climate Adaptation”

Day：2025.12.19

event ｜

Person in charge

Name Organization Position
Kyosuke INADA JICA Director General for Sustainability Management

Overview

Date：2025/11/18
Host：UNEP ARIC
Location（Pavilion Name)：Blue Zone Action Room 4

Moderators and panelists

Name Organization Position
Remco Fischer UNEP FI Climate Lead
Felicity Spors EBRD Director, Sustainable Business and Infrastructure
Nancy Saich EIB Chief Climate Change Expert
Bradley Todd Hiller IsDB Lead Climate Mitigation Specialist
Kyosuke INADA JICA DG for Sustainability Management

Primary objectives and outcomes

"Discuss the barriers to scaling up finance for adaptation and resilience, and the measures to overcome them."

Content of the discussions

• Mr. Fischer (UNEP FI) introduced the Investors Resilience Challenge (IRC) currently being developed by the Adaptation & Resilience Investors Collaborative (ARIC), a platform of MDBs and DFIs engaged in non-sovereign lending and investment, with UNEP serving as the secretariat. The IRC proposes five criteria: (i) climate risk management, (ii) measurement of climate risk outcomes, (iii) activities enabling adaptation, (iv) adaptation outcomes, and (v) mobilization of private capital (primarily for MDBs/DFIs). Investments meeting at least two of these criteria would be recognized under the “Investors Resilience Challenge.”
• Ms. Spors (EBRD) explained that EBRD has been working since 2012 to classify and promote adaptation within its lending and investment operations, approaching it as a cross-sectoral issue to avoid locking in climate risks. At the macro level, she mentioned that climate impacts and associated risks are widely acknowledged; the remaining challenge is to ensure that adaptation efforts are reflected in financial accounting and profitability. She added that MDBs have formed a working group to explore improvements. However, obtaining the necessary data for risk and response analysis remains difficult.
• Ms. Saich (EIB) noted that MDBs have been discussing the need for adaptation for over 20 years and are now considering how to integrate the Paris-aligned framework and the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), currently under negotiation. For EIB, she added, including its EIB Global arm—which accounts for about 10% of EIB’s overall activities and is largely focused on developing countries—the recently announced Climate Roadmap (Phase 2, 2026–2030) sets targets to increase the share of adaptation. And, she made the comment that IRC could risk “reinventing the wheel” given existing initiatives.
• Mr. Hiller (IsDB) highlighted that although IsDB is relatively small, its target regions include many vulnerable countries, making it one of the few MDBs where adaptation exceeds mitigation in climate-related operations. And, he stated the added benefits of integrating adaptation measures into infrastructure projects and noted IsDB’s capacity to provide insurance to vulnerable communities.
• Mr. Inada from JICA shared views on (i) JICA’s adaptation efforts (historically focused on sovereign financing and technical cooperation, now expanding into private sector investment), (ii) lessons from the 2X Challenge gender investment label, (iii) challenges for IRC, and (iv) limitations of project-level approaches (adaptation outcomes are constrained within short-term projects; linking national adaptation plans to project-level investments will be important).