What we did
Despite the strong economic case for investing in climate adaptation, public funds are significantly limited. This challenge is particularly acute for municipalities which own and operate 60 percent of Canada’s public infrastructure, have limited capacity and revenue sources to address climate impacts, and are facing a large price tag for infrastructure adaptation. Given the accelerating changes in our climate and the multi-billion-dollar loss events recently experienced in communities across Canada, a whole-of-society approach is needed. Through a financing model where private investors work alongside all orders of government, municipalities can achieve the scale and speed of the resilient infrastructure construction required to withstand and recover from climate impacts. The effectiveness of this approach depends on the collaboration of municipal climate practitioners and financial experts.
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What we achieved
Over the course of 2023, ten Canadian municipalities worked in partnership with ICLEI Canada and Co-operators on the Financing Resilient Infrastructure Project (FRIP). Through FRIP, participating municipalities identified a suite of possible resilient infrastructure projects that private investors could help realize. A core component of FRIP was to connect municipal practitioners with financial experts from both the private and public sectors. The opportunity for project participants and financial experts to exchange insights on topics related to project feasibility and bankability (i.e., cash flows) and explore finance-related questions proved to be immensely valuable in identifying municipal resilient infrastructure projects that could be realized with the help of innovative financing.
FRIP was led by ICLEI Canada, Co-operators, and Co-operators’ asset management arm – Addenda Capital. Through this project, ICLEI Canada and Co-operators aimed to understand barriers to financing resilient infrastructure projects while also shifting the perspective around the role private capital can play in building community resilience. Outputs from the rich dialogues that occurred through this work will support municipalities as they consider innovative approaches involving private finance, as a complement to public funding, in the spirit of accelerating and scaling the mission-critical work of building communities that are resilient to climate change.
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