Funding and Financing for Resilience
A partnership between CA FWD and I4G
Climate-related disasters—such as wildfires, flooding, and extreme heat—pose a significant and increasing risk to communities across the country. As private insurance markets pull back or withdraw altogether from high-risk areas, governments are increasingly stepping in as insurers of last resort.
Unlike private actors, local governments cannot opt out of safeguarding communities, providing essential services, and rebuilding after natural disasters. This means that effective management of increasing climate risks is necessary to safeguard government financial health, insurance market stability, and community safety and wellbeing.
Our Partnership
In 2025, Insurance for Good and California Forward launched a partnership aimed at developing sustainable funding and financing models for climate risk reduction. The partnership aims to clarify how different funding and financing tools across sectors and scales can fit together to develop a solid framework for climate adaptation and resilience investments, including the role of insurance in such strategies. The two organizations have convened an expert working group to explore:
How various revenue structures can be leveraged to support resilience investments and how policy and regulatory changes can improve economic incentives across the economy.
How insurers, capital providers, and rating agencies can assign measurable economic benefits of resilience action in both their underwriting and pricing.
The regulatory or policy solutions that are needed at the state and local levels.
California dreamshot Podcast
California Dreamshot is a new podcast from CA FWD in partnership with Insurance for Good and the UAW Center for Manufacturing a Green Economy. California Dreamshot will have monthly episodes on the economics of resilience hosted by Nuin-Tara Key of CA FWD and our own Carolyn Kousky, as well as monthly episodes on industrial and energy policy hosted by Kate Gordon and Priyanka Mohanty.
California Dreamshot is made for the people who move California forward! The hosts and their guests go past the headlines to the decisions that actually shape the state.
Blog Series
Joint Working Group
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Nuin-Tara Key, Executive Director of Programs, California Forward
Carolyn Kousky, Founder, Insurance for Good
Jainey Bavishi, Senior Fellow, University of Miami Climate Resilience Institute
Ricardo Bayon, Partner, Encourage Capital
Francis Bouchard, Managing Director for Climate, Marsh McLennan
Kayla Calkins, Chief of Staff & Director of Strategic Partnerships, Megafire Action
Kusi Hornberger, Partner, Dalberg Capital
Shayne Kavanagh Senior Manager of Research, Government Finance Officers Association
Zach Knight, Co-Founder & CEO, Blue Forest Conservation
John Moon, President, LISC Green
Fran Moore, Associate Professor, UC Davis
Michael Newman, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety
Kyra Peyton, Senior Innovation Manager, CSAA Insurance Group
Matt Posner, Head of Public Finance, The Resiliency Company
Laurie Schoeman, Chief Investment and Impact Officer, Partners for the Common Good
Shalini Vajjhala, Executive Director, PreCollective
“Communities are carrying the costs of climate disasters, and governments can’t walk away when private markets pull back due to increasing climate risk.”
“As climate change continues to drive up the costs of many disasters, insurability requires resilience investments at both the structure and community scale.”
To learn more about this partnership, please reach out to us at: