Exploring failure and culture in climate resilience projects

This report explores how failure-aversion acts as a systemic barrier to innovation in climate resilience projects. It argues that because resilience involves complex systems with unpredictable outcomes, failure is a necessary pre-condition for innovation. The authors identify a conflict between the need for experimentation and the rigid, short-term funding structures imposed by donors. The report introduces a model to categorize responses to failure (Individual, Operational, and Organisational levels) and their drivers (culture, mental models, and power). It concludes with recommendations for donors, intermediaries, and implementers to shift toward a 'failure-positive' culture to enable the disruptive innovations required to tackle climate change.

• Innovation and failure are symbiotic; innovation requires taking risks and making mistakes, making failure a natural part of the process that enables learning and growth. However, negative responses to failure may be limiting the creativity and leverage needed to address climate change and resilience.
• There is a systemic conflict between the theoretical recognition that embracing failure produces positive impact and the actual structures governing funding and implementation. Donors, in particular, are noted for their intolerance to failure, and organisations often lack the capacity to enable failure-positive environments.
• Power dynamics significantly influence the ability to fail. Those with less power—specifically those reliant on others for short-term funding—are less able to create positive failure structures and have less agency in defining what constitutes success or failure.
• Adaptation projects suffer from a positive reporting bias because organisations view failure as a barrier to securing future funding.
• Climate resilience requires innovation within complex systems, which necessitates an adaptive, iterative process of making changes and monitoring results. This process is unlikely to reach a solution without experiencing failures, contradicting traditional views that assume right answers are known in advance.
• The report proposes a multi-dimensional model of failure consisting of three components: a response to failure (which can be constructive or limiting), the level at which this response occurs (Individual, Operational, and Organisational), and the underlying drivers of the response (Mental models, structure, behaviour, and culture).
• A survey of 93 respondents across various sectors indicated that 58% were worried about their career progression if involved in a failed project. Those in the NGO and International Development sectors were approximately 25% more concerned about their future careers than those in innovative sectors.
• The report identifies three archetypal models for responding to failure: 'Goal Seeking Proactive' (where the goal remains but the implementation pathway changes), 'Goal and Path Restrictive' (which does not allow deviation from the set pathway), and 'Continuously Constructive'.

APA

Vora, S., Hegarty, A., Hörnberg, J., & Robens, S. (2024). Exploring failure and culture in climate resilience projects. Global Resilience Partnership. https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/exploring_failure_report.pdf

Chicago

Vora, Shuchi, Aoife Hegarty, Jesper Hörnberg, and Sarah Robens. Exploring failure and culture in climate resilience projects. Global Resilience Partnership, 2024. https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/exploring_failure_report.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Vora |first1=Shuchi |last2=Hegarty |first2=Aoife |last3=Hörnberg |first3=Jesper |last4=Robens |first4=Sarah |title=Exploring failure and culture in climate resilience projects |publisher=Global Resilience Partnership |date=2024 |url=https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/exploring_failure_report.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{vora2024exploring, author = {Vora, Shuchi and Hegarty, Aoife and Hörnberg, Jesper and Robens, Sarah}, title = {{Exploring failure and culture in climate resilience projects}}, institution = {Global Resilience Partnership}, year = {2024}, url = {https://www.globalresiliencepartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/exploring_failure_report.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }