Think Tank on “Financing the Resilient City”

The world might need an inversion of the climate adaptation finance mechanisms

ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability is an association of over 1200 local government members who are committed to sustainable development. Members come from 70 different countries and represent more than 569,885,000 people. The meeting presented a stepping stone in the follow-up to a proposal made by ICLEI Secretary General Konrad Otto-Zimmermann in conclusion of the first world congress on cities and adaptation to climate change, Resilient Cities 2010, in May of last year. Otto-Zimmermann suggested that the world might need an inversion of the climate adaptation finance mechanisms in order to abandon the usual top-down approach by international banks and finance agencies.

Jeb Brugmann to inspire the discussion

The Think Tank session was centred around a demand-driven approach to climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction. ICLEI had asked urban strategy expert Jeb Brugmann to prepare the conceptual basis, select a group of forward-thinking experts and to inspire the discussions. Jeb Brugmann is a leading practitioner and thinker on strategy and the process of innovation. For 25 years he has been devising solutions to help local communities access the benefits of globalization, and to help global organizations engage in local communities and markets. His work focuses particularly on the critical contribution of innovation at the micro-level of the locality, business model, or consumer cluster to achieve macro-level strategy objectives. As the founder of ICLEI and chief executive of major international organizations and programs, as a social entrepreneur and for-profit private sector entrepreneur, and as a corporate and urban strategy consultant, he has worked on the ground in scores of cities and rural regions in 28 countries.