Climate Strategy — Adaptation & Resilience
The world isn't short of climate solutions.
It's short of the connections that make them work.
ClimRise Strategic Partners works at the intersection of climate risk, resilience and capital — connecting evidence, credible solutions, institutions, partnerships and finance so adaptation can move from underfunded pilots to scaled, fundable impact.
Focused on India and other emerging and developing economies, where adaptation needs are rising fastest and remain the most underfunded.
This isn't built on projection. And it isn't just climate risk in isolation — degraded ecosystems compound it, which is why we treat climate and nature risk as one connected system.
Not projection. Already here.
2024 was likely the first calendar year above 1.5°C — confirmed independently by the WMO and Copernicus.
2015–2024 were the ten warmest years ever recorded — not an anomaly, a trend.
The adaptation finance gap is not narrowing, even as more of it reaches the most vulnerable countries.
The gap we close
Adaptation is underfunded, not because there's nothing to fund — but because too little of it is investable.
India and other emerging and developing economies face a growing adaptation challenge. ClimRise works at exactly this intersection.
Adaptation Strategy & Systems
Risk, vulnerability and resilience strategy, translated into adaptation planning.
Explore this area →Adaptation Partnerships & Capital
Structuring opportunities to be genuinely investable — so catalytic and philanthropic capital can pull in the larger pool of capital behind it.
Explore this area →Scaling Resilience Solutions
Curating credible solutions and building pathways from pilots to scale.
Explore this area →These apply differently depending on the system under stress.
Long-term ambition
Connective infrastructure for climate adaptation.
ClimRise is being developed to become connective infrastructure for climate adaptation and resilience in emerging and developing economies — translating climate risks into credible, fundable, scalable opportunities.
The challenge is not simply a shortage of finance or solutions. It is the missing connection between the right need, solution, institution, partner and capital — at the right time.
About ClimRise
Built to connect climate risk with capital, and pilots with scale.
ClimRise Strategic Partners is a climate strategy practice focused on adaptation and resilience, working at the intersection of climate risk, credible solutions, institutional partnerships and capital.
Why ClimRise exists
There is no shortage of climate solutions. There is a shortage of connections between climate risks, credible solutions, strategic partners and the capital needed to scale them.
ClimRise exists to close that gap — with a focus on climate adaptation and resilience. India and other emerging and developing economies face a growing adaptation challenge, yet adaptation remains significantly underfunded, highly dependent on public finance, and difficult to translate into investable or fundable opportunities.
ClimRise works at this intersection — connecting climate risks and resilience needs with evidence, solutions, institutions, partnerships and capital.
How we think about the problem
Our ambition
To become connective infrastructure for climate adaptation and resilience across emerging and developing economies.
Helping translate climate risks and resilience needs into opportunities that are credible enough to trust, fundable enough to finance, and scalable enough to matter.
What We Offer
Five ways we help move adaptation from risk to funded, scaled impact.
Each service sits at a different point on our loop — from framing the problem to closing the loan, and everything that makes the middle credible.
Let's talk
Working on adaptation or resilience and not sure which of these you need?
Reach out at climrise@gmail.com or through LinkedIn — most engagements start with a conversation, not a fixed scope.
Focus Areas
Three interconnected areas of work.
From understanding risk to mobilising capital to scaling what works — ClimRise operates across the full chain, not a single link in it.
Adaptation Strategy & Systems
- i.Climate risk, vulnerability and resilience strategy
- ii.Adaptation planning and systems thinking
- iii.Institutional and ecosystem assessments
- iv.Climate-resilient development pathways
Adaptation Partnerships & Capital
- i.Climate finance strategy and resource mobilisation
- ii.GCF, Adaptation Fund, MDB and bilateral finance
- iii.Strategic partnerships and funder engagement
- iv.Designing fundable and scalable adaptation opportunities
Scaling Resilience Solutions
- i.Identifying and curating credible solutions
- ii.Evidence, learning and MEL
- iii.Connecting solutions with implementing institutions
- iv.Building pathways from pilots to scale
Systems We Focus On
Where we apply Focus Areas A, B and C depends on the system under stress.
A mountain watershed and a coastal fishery face different risks, different institutions, and different financing instruments. This is the layer that makes our work specific rather than generic.
Ocean & Coastal Systems
Sea-level rise, cyclone intensification, salinity intrusion and coastal erosion — concentrated in livelihoods with little access to formal risk transfer.
- Structuring blue-carbon and mangrove restoration as bankable, not just conservation grants
- Matching parametric/index insurance to cyclone and storm-surge exposure for fisheries livelihoods
- Building the institutional case for coastal resilience infrastructure that MDBs and blended-finance vehicles can underwrite
Mountain & Cryosphere Systems
Glacial retreat, outburst-flood risk, spring depletion, and infrastructure expansion outpacing the assessment frameworks meant to govern it — worsened by outmigration that weakens the communities managing forests and watersheds.
- Cumulative, basin-scale risk assessment rather than isolated project-by-project clearances
- Structuring underused local institutions (community forest and watershed bodies) for carbon and ecosystem-service finance
- Packaging early-warning systems and springshed restoration as investable propositions for resilience bonds and DFI capital
Agrarian & Food Systems
Heat stress, erratic monsoons, water stress and soil degradation across the largest population base exposed to climate risk — still overwhelmingly reliant on public subsidy rather than investable models.
- Translating smallholder climate risk into insurable, financeable units
- Structuring natural/regenerative farming transitions so premium-market access offsets input-cost reduction
- Building the MEL base that lets public schemes hand off to blended or private capital at scale
Dryland & Arid Systems
Drought, desertification and groundwater depletion — a slow-onset risk category structurally underfunded relative to disaster response, with weak water-governance institutions at its core.
- Framing groundwater and water-governance risk in terms financial institutions can underwrite, not just manage
- Structuring livelihood diversification as fundable, not just donor-piloted
- Building the evidence base that slow-onset risk needs — chronically harder to finance than sudden-onset disaster
River Basin & Freshwater Systems
Flooding, water governance, and the transboundary dynamics of shared basins — the connective layer beneath both food and urban systems, and the hardest to coordinate institutionally.
- Building the institutional case for basin-scale governance where jurisdictions currently act unilaterally
- Structuring water-security investment as a cross-cutting input to food and urban resilience, not a siloed sector
- Identifying where early-warning and flood-governance capacity can be shared across basins rather than rebuilt per project
Urban & Peri-Urban Systems
Heat islands, flood exposure, and infrastructure resilience in fast-growing cities — the fastest-growing exposure category, with the deepest overlap to existing municipal and infrastructure capital.
- Structuring municipal and infrastructure finance around measurable heat and flood-resilience outcomes
- Building the case for informal-settlement resilience investment as bankable, not purely welfare-oriented
- Connecting fast-growing exposure data to the infrastructure capital already flowing into these cities
Why nature runs through all six
Nature isn't a seventh system. It's the layer underneath all six.
Mangrove loss compounds coastal risk. Forest loss compounds mountain risk. Soil degradation compounds dryland risk. Markets have historically priced climate and nature risk separately — which means both get mispriced. ClimRise treats them as one connected system, in every one of the six systems above.
Our Approach
A loop, not a line — because adaptation is never a finished state.
Every engagement moves along the same chain of connection, and every engagement's impact feeds back into the next risk assessment. Not every project starts at the beginning, and not every project needs every stage — but the logic, and the loop, stay consistent.
Why this is urgent, not aspirational
The evidence behind why we exist
This isn't a framework built on projection alone. The data already shows adaptation has moved from a future concern to a present one.
Sources: World Meteorological Organization, State of the Global Climate 2024–2025; Copernicus Climate Change Service; UNEP Adaptation Gap Report; BCG, "The Multiplier Effect of Impact Capital" (2026). Figures reflect the most recent published assessments available at time of writing and should be reverified before citing in funder-facing materials.
What has to be true
The assumptions behind the loop
A theory of change is only as rigorous as the assumptions it's willing to name. These are the barriers that determine whether each link actually holds — drawn from how financial institutions and impact-capital funders themselves describe why adaptation and nature finance stall.
IF risk is priced with credible data, THEN it can be underwritten
Uncertainty in translating physical climate and nature risk into financial metrics is the single biggest barrier institutions cite for not lending against it.
IF a track record exists, THEN capital has precedent to follow
Limited proof of commercially viable, scalable adaptation business models keeps capital allocators cautious even where the need is clear.
IF both sides can structure the deal, THEN it gets built
Capacity constraints among borrowers and lenders alike limit how many viable, often novel, adaptation and nature-finance projects get structured at all.
IF climate and nature risk are priced together, THEN neither is mispriced
Policy gaps and inconsistent data access are compounded when institutions treat climate and nature as separate portfolios rather than one connected system.
IF an opportunity is structured to be investable, THEN catalytic capital can multiply it
Funders consistently cite a lack of investable opportunities — not a lack of capital — as the top reason catalytic capital stays on the sidelines. Structuring for investability is the leverage point.
What guides the work
Three principles behind every engagement
Adaptation is treated as one connected system
Risk, solutions, institutions and capital are addressed together, not as separate workstreams.
Credibility is built, not assumed
Every recommendation is grounded in evidence, learning and monitoring — the currency funders trust.
Opportunities are shaped for capital from day one
Solutions are structured so they can actually be financed and scaled, not just piloted.
Knowledge
Thinking from the field, posted as it happens.
We write regularly on LinkedIn about adaptation finance, resilience systems, and what's actually happening on the ground. Recent posts below — follow along for more as they're published.
Five signals from the latest BRICS Leaders' Declaration that matter for climate adaptation and resilience
The latest BRICS Declaration contains an interesting set of signals for how climate resilience is evolving across emerging and developing economies.
- Adaptation is increasingly a finance issue — the Declaration links climate action with debt sustainability, fiscal space and access to climate finance.
- Community-based adaptation is moving to the centre — greater cooperation on people-centric adaptation, valuing traditional knowledge alongside science.
- Climate intelligence is becoming critical infrastructure — better risk assessment and local evidence are essential for financeable resilience investment.
- Carbon markets and adaptation are beginning to intersect — raising the question of whether climate-market revenues can strengthen resilience, not just mitigation.
- Nature is recognised as part of the resilience system — ecosystems as carbon stocks, ecosystem-service providers and resilience contributors.
Climate adaptation cannot be built as a standalone sector — it sits at the intersection of intelligence, finance, infrastructure, communities, nature and markets.
Nature should not be treated as a standalone sector. It is part of every economic system.
The World Economic Forum's Finance Solutions for Nature report is a useful reminder that the challenge is not simply to create more "nature finance."
- Nature is embedded in every system — food, water, cities, infrastructure and energy all depend on functioning ecosystems.
- The financial materiality is already there — nature loss affects supply chains, asset values and long-term resilience.
- There is no single "nature finance" instrument — 37 solutions identified, from thematic bonds to debt-for-nature swaps.
- The missing piece is investable pipelines — capital alone won't scale outcomes without stronger project structuring.
- Nature needs to be integrated into mainstream finance — not a separate bucket, but a layer running through every sector.
Climate adaptation is moving from a sustainability issue to a financial-sector issue.
The Global Center on Adaptation's Handbook for Financial Institutions: Climate Adaptation Finance offers a useful lens on what this means in practice.
- Adaptation is not only about managing risk — it can create investment opportunity through more resilient assets and stable cash flows.
- Climate risk needs to enter core financial decision-making — not sit separately inside ESG or sustainability teams.
- The opportunity is building adaptation investment pipelines — understanding risk is only the first step.
- Bankability is a major missing link — many solutions lack the financial structures or evidence to attract commercial capital.
- Scaling adaptation requires institutional change — embedding it into how institutions originate and structure investments.
Scaling ecosystem-based adaptation requires more than funding projects. It requires funding what makes them scalable.
The Global EbA Fund's latest call is interesting because it focuses on investment readiness, evidence, innovation and removing barriers to scale — not just implementation.
For India and other ODA-eligible emerging economies, this creates an interesting opportunity where proposals can demonstrate high ambition and a pathway to scale. The bigger opportunity is bridging a critical gap: turning locally proven nature-based solutions into credible, scalable opportunities for larger climate finance.
The challenge is not only finding solutions — it is building the pathway from solution → evidence → investability → scale.
Blended finance should not be judged by leverage ratios alone.
In agriculture and other sectors across EMDEs, the harder challenge is often making markets investable in the first place.
Concessional capital can play a critical role in absorbing early risks, building pipelines, proving models and creating the conditions for private capital to enter at scale.
The question is therefore not only "How much private capital did we crowd in?" but "What market did we help create?"
Himalayan disasters are rarely single-hazard events.
GLOFs can trigger cascading risks — flash floods, landslides, infrastructure damage and disruption of communities and livelihoods.
This makes multi-hazard risk assessment critical for Himalayan resilience. But risk information alone is not enough — preparedness needs to integrate community-based early warning with scientific forecasting, local knowledge and government planning.
The opportunity is to move from predicting hazards to building systems that communities can act on before disasters escalate.
Sea levels are not rising at a steady pace — and resilience planning cannot assume they will.
Global sea levels rose 5.9 mm in 2024, compared with an average annual rise of 4.7 mm between 2014–2023.
For coastal cities, communities and infrastructure, accelerating sea-level rise means historical risk assumptions may no longer be reliable — with disproportionate impacts on the most vulnerable.
The focus needs to shift from responding to individual disasters to building systems that can anticipate, absorb and adapt to changing risks. Climate change is changing the risk baseline. Our resilience strategies need to change with it.
The growing need to connect climate, health and well-being.
Climate change is increasingly a health risk multiplier — extreme heat, air pollution, water insecurity and climate-related displacement all affect human health, while the poorest communities face the greatest exposure and least capacity to adapt.
Climate and health are still too often addressed through separate funding and institutional silos. Could the climate–health nexus be an underfunded opportunity worth a focused, outcome-oriented fund — particularly across low- and middle-income countries?
An interesting development in Article 6 climate finance
GGGI is exploring how Mitigation Outcome Purchase Agreements (MOPAs) could turn future carbon revenues into upfront financing for climate projects.
For India and other EMDEs, this could be an important pathway to make future carbon revenues more bankable and unlock private capital for climate projects at scale.
A notable climate-finance development: a proposed $100M Brazil carbon fund
Backed by the World Bank, the fund could provide upfront capital for carbon projects and connect them to global markets.
For India and other EMDEs, the bigger opportunity may be replicating such models — and building strategic climate finance partnerships that move capital, solutions and learning across emerging markets.
Get in touch
Let's talk about the connection you need to make.
Whether you're an institution, funder, or implementing partner working on climate adaptation and resilience, we'd like to hear from you.