Resilience finance summit builds momentum for investment action
An event first organised by IIED and partners in 2025 has grown into a global forum bringing together investors, governments, financial institutions and communities to discuss how to mobilise finance for a climate-resilient future. The summit is a flagship event of London Climate Action Week.
London Climate Resilience Finance Summit 2026 participants take a selfie in-between sessions (Photo: Benjamin Mole/IIED)
Climate impacts are accelerating, but vital investment for resilience still lags far behind what is needed. Investors struggle to identify opportunities, communities face overly complex funding processes – and, overall, adaptation is still framed as a cost rather than as action that creates economic and social value.
The current system of financing climate adaptation is not delivering for the people who need it most. We need a rethink to deliver a more effective system.
The inaugural London Climate Resilience Finance Summit in 2025 explored these key challenges. The 2026 summit saw a surge of participants from the finance and insurance industries as well as a significant shift towards identifying specific, practical solutions to the hidden handbrakes on resilience investment and how to remove them. Conversations focused on how to integrate resilience into every investment decision and business process.
Speaking at the 2026 summit, Amal-Lee Amin of British International Investment highlighted the shift to focused action, saying: "Last year's summit brought good questions to the forefront... this year's conversations have been so much more material and granular... We're now talking the same language, about the same challenges."
More than 800 people joined the discussions. Attendees included ministers from Turkey and Ethiopia as well as delegates from the COP30, COP31 and COP32 presidencies.
As lead convenor, IIED ensured that community and civil society representatives joined in conversations with investors, banks and regulators, enabling local priorities to reach decision makers.
Members of the opening panel for the 2026 summit: the Rt Hon. the Baroness Chapman of Darlington, Minister of State for Development in the UK; H.E. Mehmet Şimşek, Minister of Finance and Treasury for the Republic of Türkiye; Negusu Aklilu, chief executive officer of the COP32 presidency secretariat office and Tom Mitchell, IIED executive director (Photo: Benjamin Mole/IIED)
As further evidence of the summit's standing, UK Minister for Development Baroness Jenny Chapman spoke at the opening plenary, outlining new UK initiatives to support vulnerable countries, including a new £3 million contribution to help develop insurance solutions in climate-vulnerable countries and new forecasting and research initiatives.
IIED researchers identified five priorities for unlocking resilience finance that emerged during the summit discussions, and we will be highlighting these during pivotal meetings later this year, including at COP31, the 2026 UNFCCC climate change conference in Antalya, Turkiye.
The London Climate Resilience Finance Summit has quickly developed into the place to have conversations about climate resilience finance, and we're already looking ahead to the 2027 summit.
