Workstream 1:
Strategic Guidance & Convergence

Guide the integration of Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance solutions in global climate change and resilience frameworks

Paving the Global Resilience Agenda -
Interview with David Howlett

David Howlett is the Head of Policy, Global Resilience Partnership (GRP), a partnership of public and private organizations joining forces towards a resilient, sustainable and prosperous future for vulnerable people and places. In addition, David has been seconded to the UNFCCC Climate Champions Team as co-lead on resilience. Under the framework of the Marrakech Partnership, he has chaired the Climate Resilience Network, a diverse set of stakeholders, to come together around a common narrative and vision for resilience efforts. At the GRP, David has been helping to set up a Resilience Knowledge Coalition to promote the use of best practices and evidence on building climate resilience.

1. At the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019, the Global Resilience Partnership mobilized key actors to support the call for action to "Raise Ambition for Climate Adaptation and Resilience." Various countries and organizations, including the InsuResilience Global Partnership, have supported this call. What progress can be seen since the call to action was raised?

Alongside the report from the Global Commission on Adaptation, the call has focused the need for urgent and immediate action to build resilience.

This is positive. We now need to build on this and advance actions by businesses, investors and civil society to deliver this action.

2. You have taken a leadership role within the Marrakech Partnership to reinforce active stakeholder engagement around climate adaptation and resilience within the framework of the Paris Agreement. What has been the value added of working within a multi-stakeholder organizational framework?

The most important lesson is that we are focusing on mobilizing action to learn what others are doing and to build new collaborations and investments. This is essential if we are going to take action both to mitigate emissions and to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

We have come together as non-state actors to agree a common narrative and pathway to climate resilience. This is focused on building the resilience of people and communities, especially in Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States. But we need to do more and drive this into action.

3. As co-lead on resilience to the Climate Champions, could you share some key milestones that have been achieved this year or can be anticipated on the pathway to COP26 for the resilience agenda?

The Champions have already launched new pathways to a 1.5-degree resilient world. All of these include actions on resilience. Most importantly the Champions are going to launch a campaign on resilience as a sister to their Race to Zero campaign.

This will be ambitious focusing on how non-state actors can take action and invest to make billions of people more resilient to climate change.

4. You are currently engaging with various stakeholders across the globe in the establishment of a Resilience Knowledge Coalition. How does this complement climate resilience and adaptation efforts?

It is absolutely essential. Although we have evidence from practice and research on how we can build a climate resilient world, this knowledge is not being used. Many networks, organizations and partnerships have this knowledge.

The objective of the Resilience Knowledge Coalition is to bring these entities together and make sure this knowledge is used to ensure that they don’t “compete” but become bigger than the sum of their parts.