Well-established practices in urban planning, redevelopment, and insurance can be adapted to stimulate investments in climate adaptation and natural disaster risk reduction.

It is from this perspective that Ceres, ClimateWise, CPSL, ICLEI and The Next Practice designed and delivered a workshop series in the US and Canada, bringing together insurance industry and city stakeholders in Boston, San Diego and Toronto. The aim of the series was to create a systematic understanding of where there could be mutually beneficial collaboration between these stakeholders to reduce the risks and increase the performance and value of today’s climate-vulnerable local areas.

This paper presents a four-stage strategic planning framework tested and refined in these workshops along with the diverse ideas and innovations identified by workshop participants. The approach, summarized in the figure below, is proposed for use as a second stage of climate adaptation planning, following the completion of local vulnerability and risk assessments.