Investments in Adaptation, Resilience Could Create 280 Million Jobs by 2035: Report

The report finds that adaptation could add up to 15% GDP in certain vulnerable states by 2050 compared to current policies.

A new report found that targeted climate and nature resilience investment could create over 280 million additional jobs in emerging markets and developing economies by 2035, while boosting GDP and unlocking a trillion-dollar market opportunity. 

The report titled “Returns on Resilience” was released ahead of COP30 by a consortium of 20 leading adaptation organisations led by Systemiq at the 2025 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund. It said that investments in adaptations deliver at least four times more benefits than costs, with a 25% annual average return rate. 

These findings come at a time when the world is already experiencing the rising costs of climate impacts. Disasters like droughts, floods, and extreme heat are displacing over 20 million people each year and wiping out key infrastructure and food production, leaving the least developed countries an estimated 10% poorer today than they would have been without the impacts of climate instability.

Manifold Returns from Resilience Investment

The report found that the adaptation and resilience market could reach $1.3 trillion annually by 2030, and adaptation could add up to 15% GDP in certain vulnerable states by 2050 compared to current policies, while strengthening fiscal stability and reducing sovereign debt risk. Additionally, these benefits are on top of reducing some of the 1-2 million additional deaths expected annually by 2050 without action. 

Cost of Inaction

The report also quantified the growing cost of inaction. It stated that at least $525 billion in growth has been erased due to changes in temperature and precipitation over the past two decades across emerging economies. If left unchecked, acute shocks and slow-onset changes caused by rising temperatures and natural loss could result in $1.2 trillion losses for the world’s largest companies by the 2050s, along with a global GDP decline of 18–23% by that time.

The report also found that despite this evidence, capital still flows in the wrong direction. For every $1 spent on resilient infrastructure, $87 is spent on infrastructure that does not include resilience considerations. 

Targeted Action is the Solution 

The report also introduced a shortlist of multilateral cooperation areas to be taken up at COP30, as well as 15 proven and scalable resilience investments that simultaneously improve human health and food security.

“Resilience is the bedrock of prosperity, yet it remains the most undervalued investment of our time. Our financial rules still constrain it instead of enabling it. COP30 must be the turning point – to rewrite the rules, recognise the true returns on resilience, and unlock the scale of finance vulnerable nations need,” said Dr Pep Bardouille, Director of the Bridgetown Initiative and Climate Resilience Advisor to the Prime Minister of Barbados. 

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