The Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center will reach One Billion People with resilience solutions by 2030. Earlier this year, the Center partnered with the Urban Institute to investigate the evidence base of resilience interventions. This work defines some of the richest opportunities for implementation –– providing points of entry for programs working in this field. Particularly as leaders at the US local, state, and national levels formulate their policy and implementation agendas in the wake of the 2020 election, this assessment of the evidence base can help transform the concept of resilience into action that saves lives and livelihoods.

Along with the Urban Institute, we are pleased to share Articulating a Program for Resilience: The Landscape of Evidence, Actions, and Geographies.

This report assesses the evidence base and range of opportunities for global action on climate resilience. This assessment comes as the resilience movement continues to evolve, yet the urgency and magnitude of the need have increased. Expanding urbanization and increasing exposure to hazards affect all places on the planet, but particularly the most socially, economically, and politically vulnerable communities. In this report, we review fundamental science and policy documents to identify opportunities for global action in six areas: community infrastructure, public finance, direct financial services, insurance, education and awareness, and food security. Review criteria for selecting contemporary interventions, or “opportunities,” included the strength of their evidence base; their propensity for immediate implementation, particularly in the communities and places with the most urgent need; their universality, scalability, and replicability across global contexts; and their potential for leveraging investment. The work provides a menu of entry points for stakeholders.