Financing Good
The Resilience Initiative

Mobilising the “resilience dividend” to support sustainable development

Burgess COMMENTARY
I am pleased to see this essay because it raises the question about how to finance the future of the world. In some ways it ought to be easy because the potential to have a better world is so huge, but it is difficult because most people in finance are stuck with the idea that the only thing that matters is the potential to earn profit and accumulate financial wealth. I argue that we have to change this thinking, and one step towards this is to rethink how conventional financial accounting is done. Rather than simply doing the double entry of financial assets and profit, there should be an accounting for ALL of the Triple Bottom Line (People / Planet / Profit) and ALL the Capitals (all of SOCIAL capital, all of NATURAL capital and all of ECONOMIC capital of which financial capital is a part). Financiers are happy to finance the potential for increase in financial capital, but the same logic should also be deployed in connection with the potential to improve social capital and to improve natural capital. The idea of a resilience dividend is very similar to the idea I am trying to articulate ... and that is very gratifying! Peter Burgess http://truevaluemetrics.org
Peter Burgess

Mobilising the “resilience dividend” to support sustainable development



Events like Devex World 2018, held earlier this week, are living proof that we are entering a future where new models lead the way. It is great to witness transformative leaders developing radically new tools and ideas that will shape the way we deliver sustainable development, at the speed and scale required to achieve urgently needed transformational change, at the systems level.

We’re seeing new business models, technological innovations and pressing global challenges converging, creating real business opportunities and sustainable ways to support economic growth.

Impact investing, blended finance, data revolution, technological innovations and scalable solutions were the key themes of Devex World 2018. They are also key focus areas of the Resilience Brokers Programme: an ambitious global initiative designed to support demonstrators of the transition to resilient development paths in 200 city regions by 2023.

Resilience Brokers champion a holistic approach to systems change that is driven by the power of collaboration, innovation and disruptive technology. A systems-based approach that is ultimately focused on improving human, ecological and economic health at both local and global scales.

You will now be wondering how are we planning to finance such an ambitious initiative. How can we mobilise the “resilience dividend”? How can we reduce the perceived risk for investors around complexity in understanding investable projects? Or what about capital market and regulatory uncertainty and a lack of proven outcomes from adopting a systems-based approach to rapidly shift the trillions required to achieve these aims?

The intergovernmental process has delivered a clear policy signal through to 2030 and beyond. The scientific community is unequivocal about the need for urgent, planetary scale action. The world’s largest investors, from Black Rock to Vanguard, are openly calling for businesses and investors to find their purpose and become a force for good. The expert groups (Transparency Taskforce and EC Europa) have made their recommendations for financial system actors to change their stripes; listen to people’s sustainability preferences; act for the long term to reduce the chances of another financial crisis; and connect sustainable finance with the specific needs of places.

The momentum is growing, from divestments to Green Bonds to embracing enhanced disclosure of climate risk and structural changes in financial supervisory mandates. The opportunity to shift to a sustainable finance paradigm is clearly now on the investor agenda.

And for investors and governments, a systems-based approach can harness this momentum with the potential to achieve a reduction in required infrastructure investment through to 2030 from around 8% of GDP per year to 4.8% with improved city-region systems health outcomes. This saving of up to 40% is now within our reach. It can be achieved by consistently applying a systems-based approach at city-region scale across the world, to mobilise the resilience dividend.

The ambitious five-year Resilience Brokers Programme is aimed to develop and demonstrate innovative systems tools to enable communities to turn data into wisdom and build the capacity to enable and accelerate the journey towards climate-compatible, risk-resilient and equitable futures, in 200 city regions worldwide. The Programme will help to establish aggregated project financing vehicles, Urban Development Investment Funds (UDIFs), in city regions, using the consistent and comparable risk-informed evidence base provided by the pioneering technology of resilience.io and collaborative project design mechanisms. UDIFs will enable the redirection of trillions in global capital flows into aggregations of resilient, risk-reduced initiatives to improve city-region development. This will unleash blended finance opportunities to mobilise insurance and investor groups, including the faith-consistent investors, for the benefit of local people and should enable more local capital to be deployed.

The introduction of sustainable development paths with this scale of capital mobilisation–working with the (re-)insurance industry to effectively integrate systemic risks into mainstream finance activities and deploy insurance into under-protected vulnerable city regions–will support the implementation of the New Urban Agenda and the achievement of the Global Goals.

The Resilience Brokers Programme is scheduled to launch in January 2019, and we look forward to introducing interested impact investors, city region champions and potential new partners to our work.

As the EU High-Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance recently stated:

“Sustainable finance means a commitment to the longer term, as well as patience and trust in the value of investments that need time for their value to materialise”.

The Resilience Brokers Programme has the potential to deliver trillions in value, but to be implemented at the necessary scale to achieve transformative action requires patience and trust. We know the world is ready. We are Resilience Brokers and we welcome you on the journey to mobilise the resilience dividend and build a better future for generations to come.

resiliencebrokers.org