Investing in Resilience in a Riskier World: senior-level roundtable at Climate Week Zurich

Thank you for inviting me and the World Meteorological Organization to join this important conversation. 

It is a pleasure to be here in Zurich, a global centre of finance, insurance and innovation, and an ideal place to discuss resilience in a riskier world. 

The signal reaching markets, governments and businesses today is unmistakable: 

Climate risk is increasingly expressed through weather. 

And weather risk is rapidly translating into economic risk. 

1. Physical climate risk is now financially material 

Around the world, storms, floods, droughts, heatwaves and wildfires are no longer isolated environmental events. They are disrupting operations, affecting supply chains, increasing insurance losses, weakening public finances and reshaping investment decisions. 

According to Swiss Re, in 2024 alone, weather and climate-related related catastrophes caused USD 318 billion in global losses, of which only 43% were insured.¹ And just two days ago, WMO released the latest European State of the Climate report, confirming that Europe is the fastest-warming continent, with record heatwaves, accelerating glacier loss, and more frequent extremes from the Mediterranean to the Arctic. 

A flood can halt manufacturing.  

A drought can constrain energy generation and transport corridors. 

A heatwave can reduce labour productivity and strain health systems. 

A wildfire can destroy assets and impair regional growth. 

These shocks travel quickly through a connected global economy. 

Climate risk is no longer isolated or local. It is now a systemic and global threat that we must face together. 

Resilience, in turn, is not just about protecting lives and livelihoods. It is also a question of competitiveness, fiscal sustainability, and a financial stability. We need far more dialogues like this one between the climate, resilience, and business communities. 

2. Science has advanced — but decision systems must keep pace 

The good news is that science has advanced dramatically, enabling investors to make more informed and smarter business and risk management decisions. 

Forecast skill continue to improve. Today’s five-day forecast is as accurate as a three-day forecast 20 years ago, while one to four day forecast accuracy has improved by around 10–20%. 

Climate understanding is deepening. Artificial intelligence is accelerating modelling and decision-support. 

Early warning systems are expanding. 

But the key question is whether our decision systems are evolving at the same speed. 

Because weather and climate intelligence today is not simply useful information. It is economic intelligence. 

It transforms uncertainty into lead time. 

It allows businesses to reroute logistics. 

It helps insurers price risk more accurately. 

It supports governments in protecting citizens and infrastructure. 

It enables investors to distinguish resilience from vulnerability. 

Forecasts do not stop storms or droughts from happening. But they turn surprise into preparedness. And preparedness protects lives, assets and growth. 

3. The invisible infrastructure behind every forecast 

None of this happens by accident. 

Behind every forecast, warning, catastrophe model or climate-risk assessment lies a global public infrastructure of observations, data exchange, prediction systems, standards and cooperation. 

This is the backbone coordinated through the World Meteorological Organization and our 193 Member countries. 

It includes satellites, ocean buoys, weather stations, radars, hydrological networks, supercomputing centres, forecasting systems, standards and real-time international data exchange. All globally coordinated under the highest technical quality standards, negotiated through WMO. 

More than 100 million observations move through this system every day, enabling countries to function as one connected global network. 

From the mobile phone warning a farmer of incoming rain, to the catastrophe models pricing reinsurance portfolios, to sovereign risk planning: they all rely on a shared backbone coordinated by WMO. 

Yet despite its critical value, this system remains underfunded and under strain. 

Demand is rising. Infrastructure is ageing, and yesterday’s bridges, dams and tunnels are not prepared for today’s extremes. Operational complexity is increasing. And expectations are expanding. 

4. Why this matters to finance and insurance 

For this audience, the implication is straightforward: 

If the upstream public data system weakens, downstream private decision-making weakens. 

Less reliable observations lead to weaker risks models. 
Weaker models mean less accurate pricing. 
And less accurate pricing drives higher uncertainty, higher premiums, reduced insurability and poorer capital allocation. 

In an AI-powered future, this only becomes more important. 

AI is only as strong as the trusted data on which it learns. 

If data is incomplete, delayed or fragmented, technology cannot compensate. 

So, strengthening the public backbone is not separate from market efficiency. 

It is foundational to it. 

5. The WMO Commons – a practical solution 

This is why today the WMO is launching the WMO Weather, Climate and Water Intelligence Commons. 

The WMO Commons is a WMO-managed pooled financing mechanism designed to sustain, strengthen and modernize the global backbone of weather, climate and water intelligence. 

It leverages what Member countries already support, mobilizing additional voluntary resources from governments, philanthropic organizations, multilateral institutions, and particularly private-sector actors who benefit directly from the system. 

It helps finance what no country can sustain alone. And it multiplies the value of every downstream investment that depends on the global system. 

Resources are allocated across four investment pathways: 

• Sustaining and optimizing the global observing system  

• Strengthening global data interoperability and prediction  
• Expanding high-impact services and early warnings  
• Building institutional capacity and user co-creation  

Our initial ambition is to mobilize at least USD 100 million over five years. 

6. Why this room matters 

This room brings together exactly the actors needed to move from diagnosis to action. 

Governments shape incentives and policy signals. 

Insurers understand risk better than almost anyone. 

Banks and investors allocate capital. 

 Standards setters improve transparency. 

International institutions can scale cooperation. 

And science provides the evidence base that makes all this possible. 

Resilience will be strongest when public systems and private innovation reinforce each other. 

 
Closing 

So the question for this room is not whether climate risk is real. 

The real question is whether the systems that generate the intelligence to manage that risk will be strong enough, trusted enough and inclusive enough when they are needed most. 

The science is clear. 

The losses are visible. 

The risks are increasingly systemic. 

Resilience does not begin after disaster strikes. 

It begins beforehand — with observations, forecasts, warnings, shared data and informed decisions. With climate knowledge and climate information. 

That global public infrastructure cannot be taken for granted. 

It must be sustained. 

It must be modernized. 

And it must be financed. 

I therefore invite you to join us, to contribute to the WMO Commons, to advocate for it, and to help strengthen the global backbone on which resilience, markets and communities depend. 

Thank you.