The Adaptation Exchange: Advancing Climate Adaptation Together

Climate impacts are no longer exceptional events. Heat waves, floods, storms and droughts create recurring operational volatility for businesses across all sectors. Most organisations assess these risks; many now report under ESG frameworks. But few successfully translate that awareness into coordinated investment decisions that build lasting resilience.

The Adaptation Exchange was created to close that gap.

What the Adaptation Exchange Does

The Adaptation Exchange is a curated, cross-sector collaboration platform that drives the implementation of climate resilience across organisations and value chains. It brings together corporates, financial institutions, insurers, and solution providers under shared logic, clear standards, and concrete demand signals.

Founding corporate members include Allianz, Bayer, ArcelorMittal, BASF, and Vonovia—joined by adaptation economy specialists and think tanks committed to turning resilience from a reporting exercise into operational reality.

The platform is operated by DSR & Partners – Climate Adaptation Advisory, based in Viersen, Germany, with the shared ambition of advancing the climate adaptation economy at scale.

The Implementation Gap

The challenge is not a lack of knowledge. It is execution:

• Standards are fragmented. No common framework connects how corporates assess, decide on, and demonstrate resilience.
• Business cases are unclear. Without shared investment logic, capital stays on the sidelines.
• Functions remain siloed. Risk, finance, operations, and procurement rarely coordinate on adaptation.

Markets accelerate when language, standards, and examples align. The Adaptation Exchange is designed to create exactly that alignment.

The Three Pillars

1. Assess: Resilience Standard

A practical, cross-sector framework to evaluate the current state of climate resilience across organisations, assets, and value chains. The standard creates shared language and enables meaningful benchmarking.

2. Decide: Business Case for Adaptation

Forward-looking decision frameworks that translate resilience priorities into investment narratives and governance commitments. This pillar directly addresses the implementation gap by making adaptation financially legible.

3. Demonstrate: Adaptation Stack

A flagship programme showcasing how coordinated portfolios of adaptation solutions reduce real business impacts from climate hazards—providing the proof of concept that markets need to accelerate.

Policy momentum: the 2026 EU Framework for Climate Resilience

On 27 October 2026 the European Commission published the EU Framework for Climate Resilience and proposed a European Climate Resilience Law (COM(2026) 730). The diagnosis matches the gap this platform was built for. The Commission describes fragmented national methods, unclear responsibility for major climate risks, adaptation still treated as a cost rather than as investment, and an insurance protection gap: historically only about a quarter of EU natural-catastrophe losses have been insured, on the EIOPA and ECB figures cited in COM(2026) 720. It estimates adaptation investment needs at about €70 billion a year.

The proposal’s answers are public: a shared warming trajectory (1.5°C by 2030, 2°C by 2050, 3°C by 2100), a named public authority for each major risk, one national strategic plan by the end of 2030, and tools such as the European Climate Viewer. It does not, by itself, give two companies a common way to judge resilience in a value chain, or a business case a CFO will fund.

That is the split. The EU framework is the public timetable and vocabulary. The Adaptation Exchange’s three pillars — a resilience standard, a business case, and a demonstrated stack of measures — are the cross-sector work that sits next to it. Organisations preparing evidence for permits or public tenders under that trajectory can also look at EU Climate Resilience Framework readiness. The law is still a proposal.

Climate+Tech as Founding Partner

Climate+Tech joins the Adaptation Exchange as a founding partner, contributing in three areas:

Product and Solution Discovery We help identify and evaluate adaptation tools, technologies, and services that can be deployed within corporate value chains—connecting the innovation landscape with organisational needs.

Research Collaborations We bridge academic climate research with the platform’s practical work. This includes connecting the Adaptation Exchange to emerging evidence on firm-level adaptation, financial materiality of physical climate risks, and the effectiveness of specific adaptation strategies.

Scientific Support We provide methodological and scientific input to the platform’s frameworks—ensuring that the Resilience Standard and Business Case methodologies are grounded in up-to-date evidence from climate science and economics.

Why the Science Matters

A growing body of academic research supports the platform’s thesis. New large-scale analysis of over 13,500 US public firms (2003–2025) confirms that firms that invest in physical protection before extreme weather events recover better in financial markets—with pre-event adaptation offsetting up to 37% of hurricane-related stock market losses. At the same time, the research shows that financially constrained firms systematically underadapt, raising questions about systemic risk concentration.

This evidence underpins the urgency of the Adaptation Exchange’s work: the gap between those who adapt and those who cannot is not merely a corporate strategy question—it is a structural risk to financial stability and supply chain integrity.

→ Read the full research: Firm-level Climate Change Adaptation

Related climate week events

The Adaptation Exchange brings climate resilience into public, practical settings as well as corporate conversations. At Munich Climate Week 2026, it hosts Crossing the cold at Lake Starnberg, using a sunrise swim as a tangible metaphor for preparing, adjusting and moving forward together.

The wider adaptation and resilience conversation also converged at Climate Week Zurich 2026, where the Adaptation Exchange had a dedicated stand connecting resilience standards, tools and cross-sector action.