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A global coalition of 10 organisations launched the Global Resilience Index Initiative (GRII) November 9, 2021 to build a universal model for assessing resilience to climate risks. The curated, open-source resource can be used in aggregated risk management across sectors and geographies.
The model will help countries focus on national adaptation investments, according to the United Kingdom Centre for Greening Finance & Investment (CGFI), one of the partners in the project.
“The GRII draws upon significant cross-sector risk modelling experience, including public-private partnerships between governments, academia, insurance and engineering,” CGFI said in a statement.
The tool will provide high-level metrics “across the built environment, infrastructure, agriculture and societal exposures”, it added.
Mark Carney, United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance and one of the patrons of GRII, said:
It is imperative that it is clear which financial flows and investments are Paris-aligned. Without this, we will not achieve the Net Zero transition needed for 1.5 degrees Celsius (maximum rise of global temperature over pre-industrial levels). GRII can play an important role by creating a shared understanding of mounting physical climate risks.
The outcomes of this risk analysis will help close the insurance protection gap and direct investment and aid to where they are needed the most, he added.
The model will help global economic sectors understand, in concrete terms, the value of building climate resilience and the costs of doing nothing, CGFI stated. This will “address the data emergency that is contributing to the climate crisis”, the body noted.
GRII partners and supporters are:
Almost every country has felt the harsh impact of climate change in recent years in some form or another. “In the last year, the heatwave in Vancouver, the floods in Germany, the polar vortex in Texas and the drought in Madagascar have shown everyone the horrifying human costs of climate change, said Emma Howard Boyd, chair of the Environment Agency and chair of the CGFI advisory board.
Systems and economies resilient to climate disruption can save millions of lives and livelihoods, she added.
The coalition wants to achieve two immediate goals. First, they want to provide global open reference risk data developed using insurance risk modelling principles.
Second, they want to provide shared standards and facilities applicable to a wide range of uses: Corporate climate risk disclosure, national adaptation planning and reporting, and the planning of pre-arranged humanitarian finance.
GRII has been initiated with partial funding and in-kind contributions from the insurance sector and partner institutions, CGFI said in its statement.