Climate change mitigation, while still a crucial North Star, cannot be the sole strategy for climate action.
As conversations around climate change-mitigating solutions have become more politicized in the US and extreme weather threatens assets, many investors are becoming more curious about climate adaptation and resilience solutions as a way to diversify their climate strategy.
For reference, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change defines adaptation as a “focus on increasing resilience to climate change’s effects by preparing communities, ecosystems, and economies for shifting environmental conditions.”
Interest in adaptation and resilience, or A&R, felt siloed to nonprofit conversations when I joined Prime three and a half years ago. That is now changing among venture capital and private equity investment managers and asset owners.
But while climate mitigation has broadly accepted methods for measurement, in terms of tons of greenhouse gases avoided or removed, the impact of adaptation and resilience investments have been harder to assess.
Over the past year, we’ve worked with Climate SMILE, an initiative aimed at strengthening and supporting climate philanthropy, to develop a climate finance Impact Measurement & Management, or IMM, playbook. The playbook, to be completed by the end of the year, seeks to provide those operating within climate finance a consolidated guide to best practices, frameworks, tools, and methodologies so that they can better deploy capital towards effective climate solutions.
The playbook looks beyond mitigation to provide emerging guidance for supporting A&R solutions, featuring work from existing resources and frameworks from respected implementers to help investors develop clearer climate strategies alongside the Operating Principles for Impact Management. Some of those resources include the Global Adaptation and Resilience Investment (GARI) Toolkit, the Tailwind Taxonomy for Adaptation and Resilience Investments and Probable Futures Climate Map.
Prime is also exploring an expanded scope for the Project Frame community alongside our own catalytic investment programs, to continue pushing the field forward.
In Frame’s 2025 Annual Survey, investors suggested that rather than abandon their climate strategies in response to changing policies, they are considering setting their sights on adaptation and resilience. They believe that A&R investment opportunities will improve their strategies as the devastating consequences of the climate crisis grow in frequency and severity.
Case studies
An emphasis on A&R solutions is not new for those who operate in “first and worst” geographies. These areas, largely in the Global South and coastal regions, have often contributed the least to the climate crisis yet have the greatest exposure to extreme weather events and the fewest resources to adapt.
Adaptation actions vary based on context, and can include strengthening infrastructure, enhancing disaster preparedness, wetland restoration, and drought-resistant agriculture’.
The challenge is that while there are adaptation and resilience frameworks, such as through UNEP and the UNDRR, there isn’t a widely accepted methodology in place for venture and private equity investors.
And, while greenhouse gas impact has accepted metrics like CO2e or methane reduced or removed, the appropriate metrics for A&R are still debated among investors. How do you measure the potential to strengthen infrastructure or the potential to make communities more resilient prior to investment? This complicated work takes time, resources, and a willingness to engage more deliberately with local stakeholder groups.
Last October, in recognition of the growing interest in A&R among the Project Frame community, we dedicated our first Asia-based Content Working Group, co-led by Climate Collective, to developing impact case studies in order to debate best practices for impact assessments among early-stage A&R solutions and better articulate how those best practices can be applied across a variety of technology types.
Project Frame will be releasing two preliminary examples, evaluating a waste-to-polymer composite material and a super absorbent polymer soil moisturizer. The case studies use Prime’s emerging human thriving assessment framework, which evaluates the positive and negative social and environmental impacts across three elements: the significance of their impact, the likelihood of the effect materializing, and the effect of the realized impact on human thriving.
These initial case studies are only the tip of the iceberg for what strong climate impact measurement beyond emissions could look like. Over the past 12 months, I’ve seen a meaningful uptick in inbound requests to Prime and Project Frame from philanthropists and market-rate investors looking to similarly upskill themselves and their teams on sourcing and scaling adaptation and resilience solutions.
Growing ecosystem
We at Prime believe that analyzing impacts on human thriving is crucial to properly addressing the multitude of threats that climate change poses as part of a robust adaptation and resilience strategy, from reduced health and increased food insecurity to ecosystem harm. By evaluating solutions against the key elements of human thriving that climate change could most directly harm—adequate housing, economic inclusion, energy access, food security, health and safety, healthy ecosystem, and water security—we feel more properly equipped to understand the full impact of early-stage climate solutions and how they may support the well-being of the planet and its people.
What does it mean to build a world in which humanity thrives, without the threat of climate change?
The response to that question has changed over the last decade—a timeframe in which the possibility of exceeding 1℃, to 1.5℃, and now 2℃ of warming became inevitable.
Rather than lead with fear, doom, and gloom, I want to share the view from my unique front-row seat to the good intentions of many powerful actors. I’m witnessing a notable shift in the way asset owners and investment managers are investing for people and planet. This shift in the conversation has me cautiously optimistic about the direction of climate investing in the midst of increasing environmental stressors.
For the past three years, I’ve led a community of 600+ organizations that have come together around a shared interest in assessing the future climate impacts of their investment decisions today. Project Frame, a program created by Prime Coalition, a US-based nonprofit that empowers donors to advance untapped climate solutions with speed and scale.
Members of the Frame community identify concern for the planet as their leading motivator for investing in climate solutions. They also see their climate expertise as a means to remain competitive. For institutional limited partners and growth equity investors, meaningful and thorough climate impact analyses are now viewed as important tools to help mitigate different types of risk and deliver on their fiduciary duty.
The field is beginning to coalesce around the need for clear A&R impact metrics and methodologies, in the same way that Prime blazed a trail for forward-looking emissions impact in 2017 alongside NYSERDA. This feels like a similar moment for A&R.
One component that cannot be overlooked is philanthropy. Grants to nonprofits were needed in order to activate impact-oriented investor community around GHG impact potential; the same will be needed if we are to accelerate best practices for investing in A&R.
We are proud to not be alone in this work, as the scale of the problems we aim to solve requires deploying significantly more capital —to the tune of $1.5 to $1.6 trillion dollars annually to meet climate mitigation goals alone.
The truth is, no one has all the answers, and supporting any early or commercial solutions is inherently risky. But interest and enthusiasm from a growing cohort of investors with capital to deploy means that I find myself feeling more hopeful about our ability to meet the moment.
If you are also finding yourself curious about adaptation and resilience impacts in your investment decisions or philanthropic giving, I encourage you to ask more questions of your fund managers and to follow the work of Project Frame and others to learn and add your voice to the choir so we can collectively deploy capital more thoughtfully.
Keri Browder is Chief Growth Officer at Prime Coalition and leads Project Frame.
Prime Coalition is a nonprofit public charity that empowers donors to advance untapped climate solutions with speed and scale. Prime achieves its mission through its catalytic investing, knowledge sharing, and technical advising strategies. Since its founding in 2014, Prime has built impact-prioritizing catalytic investment programs, mobilizing more than $312MM in catalytic capital and partnering with over 249 philanthropic organizations. It launched CRANE as an easy-to-access online tool that helps thousands of investors consider the forward-looking emissions impacts of their investment decisions, as well as Project Frame as a community to provide resources to investors considering the future climate impacts of their investments. For more information, visit: www.primecoalition.org or email: [email protected].
