A new report from the European Commission’s Reflection Group on Mobilising Climate Resilience Financing calls for urgent action to scale up funding for climate adaptation across Europe. The report was presented this week to Wopke Hoekstra, the European Commissioner for Climate Action, and outlines how Europe can close the growing gap between climate risks and investment in resilience. Among the examples of promising collaboration, the report highlights the Resilient Delta initiative.

The report arrives at a crucial moment. Floods, droughts, heat and soil subsidence are increasingly affecting housing, infrastructure and public services across Europe. Without coordinated action, the authors warn, European societies risk facing repeated disruption as damage increases and recovery becomes more difficult.

What does the report say?

The Reflection Group’s report calls for a shift away from fragmented funding towards a more systemic approach to financing climate resilience. It highlights the need for stronger public investment, improved risk-sharing and financial instruments that support long-term adaptation rather than short-term recovery. A central recommendation is to take climate risks into account much earlier in investment decisions, instead of responding only after damage has already occurred.

To make that shift, the report stresses the importance of closer cooperation between governments, researchers and financial institutions. Building resilience, it argues, is not only a technical challenge, but also a financial one. How risks are understood, shared and translated into action will shape how well societies are able to adapt. The Resilient Delta initiative is cited as an example of this kind of cross-sector collaboration, bringing together science, policy and finance to strengthen climate resilience in practice.

Resilient Delta’s work on climate adaptation finance

Within the Resilient Delta initiative, work on climate adaptation finance is led by Zac Taylor (TU Delft). He focuses on connecting science with financial institutions such as insurers, banks and investors, alongside public authorities and policymakers.

“We’re working together to build a knowledge ecosystem where science, policy and practice can work together to enrich and inform an action agenda for the Dutch delta. We do so through concrete activities that align scientists with timely issues identified by stakeholders, like our research project on residential risk labels. At the same time, our work is always informed by international developments, and it’s vital that we bridge our efforts here with those at the European scale,” says Taylor.

Resilient Delta does not work in isolation. Its activities are closely linked to a wider network of partners from government, finance and practice. The European report also references NL AAA initiative and the Working Group on Climate Adaptation of the Platform of Sustainable Finance, with whom Resilient Delta works to strengthen climate adaptation in the Netherlands.  “We see how, with time and trust, public, private, and academic partners can build and advance shared learning, innovation, and action,” says Taylor.

A broader ambition

Professor Machiel van Dorst (TU Delft), the Resilient Delta initiative’s scientific director, says the report reflects a growing recognition that resilience depends on transdisciplinary collaboration. “Through these collaborations, we continue to build our understanding of how to advance transdisciplinary ways of working that add value to specific challenges like climate finance, but also transferrable to other societal challenges.”

He adds that initiatives like Resilient Delta and the broader Convergence alliance show how collaboration can help turn knowledge about climate risks into concrete action. “The challenge now is to ensure that this way of working becomes the norm rather than the exception.”