Investing in Resilience: Cities, Finance, and the Challenge of Fair Protection
Insights from EURESFO 2025
EURESFO 2025 took place in Rotterdam from 25-27 June 2025, bringing together city and regional leaders, practitioners, researchers and EU-level actors to exchange on how to accelerate resilience action in the face of compounding risks. Across three days, the programme combined opening plenaries and parallel sessions with hands-on formats such as mobile workshops around the city and an interactive Marketplace showcasing tools, project pitches and decision-support approaches. The European Urban Resilience Forum is deliberately designed to be open, practical and discussion-driven.
This article picks up on a key thread from the 12th edition of the forum - how to finance resilience fairly - and points to what this could mean for the “going beyond” agenda at the upcoming EURESFO 2026 in Guimarães.
Resilience Investment: High Returns, Persistent Barriers
Participants underlined that investing in resilience delivers clear economic benefits. The European Commission highlighted a 1:10 return ratio for resilience investments, reinforcing the case that resilient investment pays off over time. However, speakers stressed that private finance must be de-risked, climate-proofing integrated into investment due diligence, and smaller municipalities supported with project preparation capacity. Administrative simplification was repeatedly flagged as essential to make EU and national funding accessible to local actors.
Contributors argued that the notion of achieving greater impact with fewer resources is no longer sufficient in a context of escalating climate risk. Protecting lives and assets requires sustained investment, and the central question is not whether costs will be incurred, but how fairly they are distributed across society. They further emphasised that climate resilience must be embedded directly into financial decision-making processes, rather than treated as a separate policy domain.
From Returns to Systems: Financing Resilience That Reaches Communities
While the economic case for resilience investment is increasingly clear, discussions highlighted that how resilience is financed matters as much as how much is invested. Long-term resilience requires moving beyond isolated, project-based funding toward system-wide, risk-informed financing and governance frameworks.
At the same time, participants highlighted persistent governance and capacity gaps. Adaptation financing often remains concentrated at national level, limiting its effectiveness for local action. Uncertainty around adaptation risk continues to deter investors, and some innovation hubs have yet to operationalise financing for adaptation action.
The Metropolitan Area of Barcelona is addressing these gaps through targeted public investment, including €30 million for social cohesion and €50 million for neighbourhood retrofitting, explicitly placing communities at the centre of intervention. Horizon Europe was identified as a key financial resource, yet participants stressed that cohesion and national funding must be better aligned with local implementation needs.
Speakers acknowledged the challenges that arise when financing remains centralised, noting that those implementing adaptation measures on the ground require both financial support and stronger representation and consideration in national decision-making processes
Local innovation was presented as a way to translate system-level finance into tangible action. Rotterdam’s incentive programmes for private roofs and water infrastructure illustrated how targeted subsidies can stimulate private investment in support of public adaptation goals. By leveraging its flat roof stock, the city combined stormwater management with citizen engagement through financial incentives and awareness-raising initiatives, such as annual Roof Day festivals.
Ensuring that smaller and more vulnerable communities benefit from these approaches remains a central challenge. The Local Adaptation Fund in Guadeloupe was highlighted as an example of financing for small and outermost regions, provided that inclusion is actively safeguarded. Simplified, flexible funding mechanisms were praised for empowering communities often excluded from mainstream schemes.
Taken together, these examples underscored that scaling resilience finance depends not only on the volume of investment, but also on governance design, strengthened local capacity, and mechanisms that effectively connect strategic funding with on-the-ground action.
Insurance Gaps and Equity Challenges
Insurance was identified as a critical but unevenly accessible component of resilience finance. Affordability and accessibility remain major equity issues, particularly for vulnerable populations and smaller municipalities that often lack adequate coverage and financial literacy to navigate complex insurance products. Closing this protection gap requires coordinated action between municipalities, insurers, and national or regional authorities. Ukraine’s ongoing situation caused by Russia’s large-scale invasion and
continued attacks, illustrates how crises expose systemic vulnerabilities in risk financing. In conflict settings, traditional insurance mechanisms often fail, highlighting the need for more inclusive and adaptable systems.
Participants also emphasised that insurance should complement, not substitute, prevention. Without strong risk identification and preventive measures, insurance risks becoming unaffordable and/or unsustainable.
Measuring Value and Scaling Up Finance
A recurring challenge remains the difficulty of quantifying the benefits of adaptation action. Without clear and widely accepted methodologies, assessing affordability and value for money remains complex. Work is currently underway in initiatives such as the Basque Country Resilience Project to develop approaches for measuring the value of adaptation solutions.
Scaling up adaptation finance will require sustained risk reduction efforts, robust accounta-
bility frameworks, cross-sector cooperation, strong political leadership, and effective communication. Tools such as the Pathways2ResilienceAdaptation Investment Cycle and the Catalan Climate Fund were presented as scalable pathways to mobilise further investment. Complementing these pathways, the importance of fostering bottom-up innovation and diversified financing approaches within the EU Missions was highlighted.
Looking Ahead: Implications for This Year's Edition
The discussions at last year’s event make clear that resilience finance has moved from conceptual debate to practical implementation challenges. The focus is no longer solely on demonstrating returns, but on redesigning governance systems, improving accessibility, and ensuring that finance reaches the communities most at risk.
For this year’s edition, the implications are clear. The agenda must build on the recognition that investment alone is insufficient without fair cost-sharing, administrative simplification,
and stronger alignment between European, national, and local levels. Greater attention will need to be paid to operationalising inclusion—particularly for smaller and vulnerable regions—while advancing practical tools to measure value and attract private capital.
If last year’s discussions established resilience as a core investment priority, this year’s edition presents an opportunity to demonstrate how that priority can be translated into equitable, system-wide action that protects communities across Europe.