We were delighted to support the Global Center for Adaptation (GCA)’s Climate Adaptation Summit 2021 , hosted by the Netherlands with support from the Global Center on Adaptation. The Summit successfully set the scene for the Decade of Action to come with many positive and motivating contributions from around the globe.

Much important work has been published alongside the Summit along with the launch of the Race to Resilience to take place in parallel with the Race to Zero. We are delighted to be contributing to the work of the High-Level Climate Champions team through our participation and support.

It was exciting to see the contribution of Macquarie to the Summit, and how their innovative leadership has been firmly setting out a transformative path for the finance sector, and to see how the GCA and its partners and contributors delivered a truly inspirational two days of events.

With speakers including politicians, city leaders and leading lights of the climate action global agenda, the Summit was a positive start to the year of action to come.

In the 24 hours over 4 channels of live streamed events the event included:

• 32 world leaders in the opening session
• 18000 registrations for the conference platform
• 300 speakers
• 130 side events shared at https://cas21-side-events.com/

Watch the wrap up video from Monday 25 January for an overview. All the videos and events of the Summit can be viewed on CAS TV.

Resilience Shift highlights of the Summit:

We shared for the first time in the CAS2021 cinema, a video to explain our project to develop end to end Climate Resilient Infrastructure Guidance.

We have built on our work to date with further research work on guidance, tools and standards during 2020 in collaboration with Arup, and the International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure. Alongside that work, the GCA, who conducted a stocktake exercise of climate resilient infrastructure standards. Our work together has shown that stakeholders across the infrastructure value chain need consistent, practical and actionable guidance to build climate resilient infrastructure systems, with a golden thread of systems thinking across the whole life cycle. In spring 2021, through a collaborative, multi-stakeholder process, we will develop this guidance to strengthen the resilience value chain. Follow our blog for more details to come about this work and our partnerships.

We also shared a podcast conversation with the inspiring Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, architects of the Paris Agreement, reflecting on how The Power of Deep Listening can help leaders to tackle the challenges of the climate crisis and other uncertainties. Building on our work exploring resilient leadership, this podcast will make you feel a little more optimistic about our collective future.

Among the Anchoring Events, we enjoyed the Africa, Water and Resilient Cities sessions on Monday, connecting to the Urban Water Resilience in Africa initiative of the World Resources Institute, supported by GIZ. Among its activities is the implementation of the City Water Resilience Approach to initially three City Regions in Africa, in partnership with The Resilience Shift, Arup and the Resilient Cities Network. Speakers included Betsy Otto and Smita Rawoot from WRI. A Joint Statement on Accelerating Climate Adaptation in Cities was published by the GCA, WRI, R-Cities, and UNHabitat that gave more information about a number of high-level collaborative initiatives including A Resilient Recovery, Five principles of accelerating and scaling urban climate adaptation, and 1000 Cities Adapt Now.

We also enjoyed the discussion at Tuesday’s Infrastructure event, organized by Macquarie, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management of the Netherlands, and the Global Center on Adaptation’s Infrastructure and Nature-based Solutions team.

Watch the session here.

There were many significant commitments from world leaders during the two days and the voice of young people was heard loud and clear, in particular the call to action among government leaders by young people from more than 115 countries entitled “Adapt for our Future” to former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Thank you to all those involved – let’s keep moving onwards and upwards in 2021.