Building a Resilient Tomorrow: Concrete Actions for Global Leaders

The World Economic Forum's 2024 white paper argues that investing in resilience is critical for long-term growth, with potential GDP impacts ranging from -8% to 15%. It identifies nine 'resilience pioneers' across three themes: climate, energy and food; supply chain; and organizational readiness. Key examples include Siemens' microgrids in the Azores and South Africa, the World Food Programme's land restoration in the Sahel, and FEMA's BRIC programme in the US. The report outlines seven priority actions for leaders, structured around three pillars: building leadership capabilities, measuring resilience journeys, and developing public-private partnerships. It emphasizes that the annual investment gap for net-zero transition is approximately $3.5 trillion, and that early investment in resilience correlates with higher total shareholder returns during economic crises.

• The financial impact of inaction on resilience is significant, with potential effects on gross domestic product (GDP) ranging from -8% to 15%.
• The report identifies nine 'resilience pioneers' across three themes: climate, energy and food; supply chain; and organizational readiness, covering four continents.
• In the climate, energy and food sector, Siemens implemented microgrids on Terceira Island, increasing the renewable energy share from 25% to 60% and reducing yearly emissions by 43% (3,636 tonnes of CO2e).
• The World Food Programme's Sahel Integrated Resilience Programme rehabilitated 280,000 hectares of land, with each hectare sequestering 6 tonnes of CO2 annually, and shielded approximately 500,000 people in Niger from the 2022 food crisis.
• FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) programme has allocated nearly $4 billion to over 1,000 applications across 55 states and territories and 34 tribal nations.
• Iberdrola has invested over
  40 billion in the energy transition, achieving global emissions of 88 gCO2/kWh and European emissions of 59 gCO2/kWh, which is 75% lower than its European competitors.
• UNICEF's Supply Chain Maturity Model (SCMM) has been used by 39 countries to improve essential services, with 15 nations improving their supply chain maturity by at least one level between 2018 and 2021.
• Farmerline has trained, financed, or digitized over 2 million farmers and traced 75 million kilos of food to improve supply chain transparency.
• The UAE's 'Jahiz' digital platform has been adopted by 51 government institutions, with over 50,000 federal employees completing more than 500,000 hours of skilling.
• The FAO's anticipatory action (AA) in Mindanao, Philippines, provided 1,500 families with benefits of $4.4 per $1 spent, resulting in $538 in savings and avoided losses per family.
• The report proposes seven priority actions for leaders: developing a resilience mindset, creating a resilience agenda, assessing against a framework, factoring resilience into decision-making, continuous measurement, developing new financing/insurance, and setting up public-private partnership networks.
• There is a substantial investment gap for climate adaptation; while yearly needs are estimated at $340 billion by 2030 for developing countries, only $29 billion was mobilized in 2020.

APA

World Economic Forum (2024). Building a Resilient Tomorrow: Concrete Actions for Global Leaders. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Building_a_Resilient_Tomorrow_2024.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Building a Resilient Tomorrow: Concrete Actions for Global Leaders. 2024. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Building_a_Resilient_Tomorrow_2024.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Building a Resilient Tomorrow: Concrete Actions for Global Leaders |date=January 2024 |url=https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Building_a_Resilient_Tomorrow_2024.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2024building, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Building a Resilient Tomorrow: Concrete Actions for Global Leaders}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2024}, month = jan, url = {https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Building_a_Resilient_Tomorrow_2024.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }