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Financing DRR

Τhis theme covers economic analysis supporting risk-informed investments, better investment planning and financing strategies for disaster risk reduction, cost-benefit analysis and other DRR investment appraisal techniques, and ex-ante/ex-post financing.

When Guatemala analysed how public money was spent on disaster risk and climate action, a clear picture emerged: prevention was underfunded — and opportunity was being missed.

Latest Financing DRR additions in the Knowledge Base

Lesson 1: Undertaking climate diagnostics for climate adaptation investment planning thumbnail
Documents and publications

Drawing on experience from Armenia, Bhutan, Cambodia, Indonesia, Mongolia, and Nepal, these lessons explain how strategic climate diagnostics can identify priority risks and how economic, fiscal, and financial analysis can build the case for investment.

Asian Development Bank (ADB)
Evaluating a model’s appropriateness for climate & disaster risk finance decision making thumbnail
Documents and publications

This guidance note provides a framework for evaluating whether climate and disaster risk models are fit for climate and disaster risk financing decisions, covering model transparency, hazard, exposure, vulnerability, loss and uncertainty assessment.

InsuResilience Solutions Fund
Solar panels on a suburban home, surrounded by lush greenery and a sunny blue sky.
Update

Subsidised power is tackling energy poverty and health risks for some of northern Mexico’s most vulnerable city dwellers.

Dialogue Earth
Social protection challenges: The exposure of Social Assistance Reference Centers to flood and landslide risks thumbnail
Documents and publications

Study assessing the exposure of Brazil’s Social Assistance Reference Centers (CRAS) to flood and landslide risks. By integrating IDCRAS and BATER data, it identifies vulnerable facilities and supports preparedness, contingency planning and DRR.

Brazilian Journal of Environmental Sciences (Revista Brasileira de Ciências Ambientais)
Update

Vermont recognized the ongoing flood exposure facing the state with the passing of July 10, a now-infamous date for Vermont.

Vermont league of cities & towns
Update

The agreement will allow Seychelles to rapidly access funds for household cash transfers following climate shocks such as floods, landslides and tsunamis, with the ASP acting as the delivery channel for these transfers to affected individuals and families

African Risk Capacity
Search-and-rescue teams work through the rubble of a collapsed building in El Paraíso, southwest Caracas
Stefano Pampanin
In this blog, the author highlights that one of the central DRR questions is not simply how much disasters cost after they occur. It is how much we are willing, and actually capable, to keep paying by failing to reduce risk before disasters happen.
 northern lights alongside a thundercloud.
Research briefs

During a 100-year geomagnetic storm, 3.5 million people and 91,000 businesses are predicted to lose power, with daily economic losses of $1.22 billion.

Eos - AGU
Update

In Marigot, two spring-fed water systems faced the same storm. One continued delivering water while the other failed completely, showing how early investment in source protection and disaster risk reduction can strengthen resilience.

Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation
Update

The Himalayan flood exposed a risk that begins beyond Nepal’s borders – and demands a response that does too.

Lowy Institute
When climate risks become evident: A natural experiment on risk perceptions in the housing market thumbnail
Documents and publications

Study uses the 2020 Gjerdrum landslide as a natural experiment to examine how climate risk salience affects housing markets. Exposed properties experienced temporary price declines of 1–1.5 per cent, while new residential development in risk zones fell.

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
The role of remittances in household resilience to extreme weather in the Kyrgyz Republic: Evidence from panel data thumbnail
Documents and publications

This paper examines how remittances influence household expenditure during drought and excess rainfall in the Kyrgyz Republic.

Asian Development Bank (ADB)
Last updated 25 Aug 2026
We cannot reduce risk effectively if we cannot measure disaster losses. Have a look at stocktaking, challenges and best practices in this collection on disaster loss data. Traditionally
Update

New Zealand is not on track to adapt to growing climate risks, nor is it cutting emissions quickly enough, according to the latest reports issued by the Climate Change Commission.

Conversation Media Group, the
Rain on Galata Bridge in Istanbul and people walking
Last updated 19 Aug 2026
This is a centralized resource for policymakers, practitioners and researchers seeking to understand and reduce disaster risk in tourism systems.
Update

From sugar and cocoa to copper and credit, El Niño could create divergent risks across commodities, regions and asset classes.

Morgan Stanley
Last updated 13 Aug 2026
These resources explore the nexus between poverty and disasters, as well as efforts to reduce disaster risks for vulnerable populations.
A woman walks on a flooded road with her child after the rain in Lagos, West of Nigeria on October 6, 2022.
Update

Polycrisis -multiple and often overlapping crises- create new vulnerabilities. They have severe effects on countries in sub-Saharan Africa with high poverty levels where weak institutions and limited public resources make it hard to respond effectively.

Conversation Media Group, the
Meetings and conferences
Bangkok
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Online
This interactive two-part webinar series brings together government officials, climate finance experts, to explore core concepts, methodological options, and reporting guidelines needed to build decision-useful climate finance tracking architectures.
Adaptation Finance Taxonomy Playbook thumbnail
Documents and publications

The Adaptation finance taxonomy playbook helps the implementation of taxonomy approaches through practical tools. Financial institutions can apply these tools to effectively identify, assess and scale adaptation finance opportunities across jurisdictions.

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
Research briefs

A model developed by Washington State University researchers could someday help communities determine how best to motivate homeowners to prepare their properties for possible wildfires.

Washington State University
Meetings and conferences
Online
This webinar will introduce UNEP FI’s Adaptation Finance Taxonomy Playbook, a practical resource designed to help financial institutions navigate these challenges.
Update

Simulation games are not new in disaster risk and climate adaptation. Layer Up! builds on this tradition but addresses a gap: questions about the trade-offs between different risk financing instruments.

Centre for Disaster Protection
Update

A paper provides the first global, systematic analysis of adaptive social protection program effectiveness. It finds that when the goal is to prevent deeper poverty, targeting meaningful support to the poorest outperforms spreading the same budget thin.

World Bank, the
Too hot to work, too poor to rest: health and economic impacts of heat stress on informal workers in urban India thumbnail
Documents and publications

This report quantifies the health and economic loss and damage that extreme heat inflicts on informal workers, a group that makes up close to 90% of India's workforce yet remains largely invisible in heat-risk assessments.

International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)
PNG PDNA Cover
Documents and publications

This post-disaster needs assessment examines the impacts of the 2024 floods in Western Province, Papua New Guinea. It identifies humanitarian needs and priority actions to support recovery and strengthen resilience.

Papua New Guinea - government
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
Positioning Nepal to access the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage: recommendations to untap essential finance
Documents and publications

This policy brief examines Nepal's opportunity to leverage the Barbados Implementation Modalities (BIM) start-up phase to access the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD).

Department for International Development
Aerial view of the north Selangor flood following heavy rainfall, Malaysia (2021)
Update

Climate-related disasters are becoming one of Asia’s most important economic and fiscal challenges.

Asian Development Bank Institute
paper-5.pdf thumbnail
Documents and publications

This working paper examines how Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten finance disaster recovery and why they make limited use of modern disaster risk financing instruments despite their high exposure to natural hazards.

Cornerstone Economics
 Access to disaster risk financing for frontline local actors thumbnail
Documents and publications

This report shows how disaster risk financing reaches – or fails to reach – frontline actors, and identifies practical ways to close the gaps that keep timely, adequate, locally led financing out of reach.

Global Network of Civil Society Organisations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR)
Managing disaster-related fiscal risks in a shock-prone world: Insights from the Cat DDO (Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option) experience thumbnail
Documents and publications

This evaluation addresses gaps related to the catastrophe deferred drawdown option (Cat DDO). espite its growing adoption, empirical evidence on the Cat DDO’s effectiveness remains limited, particularly regarding its role in post-disaster financing.

World Bank, the
Extreme weather resilience: why it matters and how we’re building it thumbnail
Documents and publications

This paper examines why extreme weather resilience is becoming a core priority for infrastructure investors and how it should be built into investment decisions.

Actis
Last updated 10 Jul 2026
These resources explore the economic, social and environmental dividends of investing in disaster risk reduction.
Wetland
Research briefs

Wetlands protect communities and ecosystems from flooding. A study quantifies their financial importance.

Eos - AGU
The credit channel of acute vs chronic climate change-related risk thumbnail
Documents and publications

This working paper (No. 1048) investigates how banks adjust credit supply in response to temperature-related climate risk, using a firm-bank level panel of French single-establishment micro and SME firms from 2010 to 20

Banque de France
Early warning systems and anticipatory action: the fiscal case for pre-disaster financing thumbnail
Documents and publications

The guide, previously published in 2023, expanded its coverage to include an analysis of anticipatory action and early warning systems and the fiscal case for pre-disaster financing.

Risk-informed Early Action Partnership (REAP)
Update

A hybrid institutional capital model could package small infrastructure resilience projects to make them attractive to institutional investors, a new research paper proposes.

Smart Cities Drive
A Cyclone Preparedness Programme (CPP) volunteer, during an early warning drill in Chila village, Bangladesh
Update

The government has designed what it calls a "continuum of support", a two-instrument financing package that layers government resources on top of existing humanitarian delivery systems.

Financial Protection Forum (World Bank)
Training course
Online
To support Financial Institutions globally, GCA developed the Handbook on Climate Adaptation Finance, a practical resource designed to help them integrate climate adaptation into their strategies, operations, and financing activities.
  • Global Center on Adaptation
Close-up of a senior adjusting a digital smart heating thermostat at home
Update

Smart thermostats and connected devices are helping some utilities reduce strain on the grid.

Yale Climate Connections
Green finance focuses on climate-conscious investments, driving sustainable economic development while balancing business growth with environmental responsibility.
Dr Neekhil Bhowoniah
Climate finance integrity ensures that funding reaches frontline disaster preparedness efforts. Using Mauritius as a case study, this post highlights how centralised financial bottlenecks stall local infrastructure delivery, leaving communities exposed.
Financing implementation of the comprehensive school safety framework: Policy brief thumbnail
Documents and publications

This policy brief provides a first entry point for governments who have endorsed or are implementing aspects of the Comprehensive School Safety Framework (CSSF) to identify potential financial resources they can access, and how to secure them.

Global Alliance for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience in the Education Sector (GADRRRES)
Zambia crisis and disaster risk financing diagnostic thumbnail
Documents and publications

The objective of this report is to summarize Zambia’s financial preparedness to crises and disasters at the sovereign, firm, and household levels. In this context, the focus is on the fiscal implications of the emergency response to shocks for the GRZ.

World Bank, the
Updated Return on Investment for preparedness to respond study thumbnail
Documents and publications

This report presents updated findings from WFP’s Return on Investment (ROI) for Preparedness study, demonstrating the value of pre-shock investments in strengthening emergency response.

World Food Programme (WFP)
Kenya disaster risk financing strategy 2026 -2030 thumbnail
Policies and plans
Policy type
National policies and plans

This strategy aims to strengthen national and county governments’ financial capacity to manage disaster risks across the DRM continuum, protect vulnerable groups, safeguard development gains, build resilience, and maintain fiscal stability.

Kenya - government
Country perspectives on pre-arranged financing: Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal and Zambia thumbnail
Documents and publications

This report presents a comparative synthesis of how stakeholders in three Caribbean Small Island Developing States — Belize, Grenada, and Jamaica — value the core attributes of pre-arranged financing (PAF) for sovereign disaster risk.

Centre for Disaster Protection
Country perspectives on pre-arranged financing: Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal and Zambia thumbnail
Documents and publications

This report presents the first cross-country study to use a structured simulation to elicit how policymakers in five African countries value the core attributes of pre-arranged financing (PAF) systems for disaster response.

Centre for Disaster Protection
What governments want from pre-arranged financing: evidence from Africa and the Caribbean – policy brief thumbnail
Documents and publications

This policy brief presents the first cross-country study of what governments want from pre-arranged financing (PAF) — funding secured in advance to respond to disasters.

Centre for Disaster Protection
Iluminated light bulb is located on soil and plant are growing.
Update

Developing economies in Asia and the Pacific are caught in a dangerous feedback loop: rising debt burdens are constraining their ability to invest in climate action, while climate shocks are worsening fiscal pressures and increasing debt risks.

Asian Development Bank Institute
Standing the heat: an analysis of heatwave financing in India’s Union budget thumbnail
Documents and publications

This report highlights a significant gap in dedicated public financing for heat resilience In India.

Greenpeace International