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Report

Ensuring a Better Future: Innovative Financing for Resilient Communities

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Kanika Singh

Director, Catalytic Capital, Milken Institute
Kanika Singh is director of innovative finance at the Milken Institute. She is responsible for executing the Institute's signature research projects, the Financial Innovations Labs, with a specific focus on the market failures and financing gaps in climate solutions.
A headshot of a man named Alexander Meeks. He is standing against a blurred background and smiling at the camera. He has brown skin, a short dark brunette beard, short dark brunette hair, and brown eyes. He is wearing glasses and a gray collared polo shirt.

Alexander Meeks

Director, 10,000 Communities Initiative, Milken Institute Finance
Alexander Meeks is a director at Milken Institute Finance. He focuses on helping communities accelerate resilient disaster recovery and adapt to extreme weather events.
A woman with curly blonde hair wearing a black button-down shirt smiles softly while standing indoors, with greenery blurred in the background.

Caroline Teare

Senior Associate, Catalytic Capital, Milken Institute
Caroline Teare is a senior associate on the Catalytic Capital team at the Milken Institute. She supports the development and execution of the Institute’s Financial Innovations Labs, which focus on tackling financing gaps and structural barriers to investment across sectors.
Topics
Climate and Environment
Climate Resilience Measures
Finance
Public Finance
Community Resilience
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We live in a new reality of extreme weather events, unprecedented in their intensity and frequency. Thunderstorms, hurricanes, and fires intensify within hours, catching entire neighborhoods off guard. Extreme heat domes persist for weeks, disrupting economies and costing lives. We seem to be, individually and collectively, ill-prepared for the scale of these disasters. The result is operational disruption, budgetary shortfalls, and insurance and investor retreat from at-risk areas. The economic and social impacts of these disasters are rising: Global economic losses from disasters have exceeded $200 billion every year since 2016.

In 2025, the LA fires magnified the impact of rising weather perils and inadequate resilience. In response, the Milken Institute worked on a Financial Innovations Lab that included 75 stakeholder interviews, a Lab in Los Angeles, CA, and working group discussions. Informed by expert insights and research, this report discusses the building blocks of community resilience, reviews the current state of policy and investment, identifies the challenges deterring greater private-sector investment, and recommends innovative financing frameworks that align differing risk and return requirements to support a multi-stakeholder approach to investing in resilience at scale.

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