Searching: Research & Analysis

Building Rural Women’s Climate Resilience: Seven Business Drivers Delivering Commercial Value

As climate pressures rise, strengthening rural women’s resilience is critical for their livelihoods and for the long-term viability of the rural businesses that serve them. Through ABERA (Accelerating Business to Empower Rural Women in Agriculture), a CGAP and IDH collaboration, this paper identifies seven practical business drivers that simultaneously strengthen rural women’s climate resilience and business performance.

From Safety Net to Springboard

As climate risks intensify, there is an urgent need to better support low-income communities to adapt and build resilience. This paper highlights an untapped opportunity hiding in plain sight - integrating financial services into social protection programs – and outlines five priorities for funders, policymakers, and social protection professionals to unlock its potential.

Resilience for All: Why Inclusive Finance Can't Wait

The world faces urgent challenges as risks intensify and interconnect, amplifying vulnerabilities, especially for low-income populations and small and medium enterprises (MSEs). If left unaddressed, these vulnerabilities can create ripple effects with national, regional, and global consequences. This paper highlights the importance of inclusive finance as an indispensable component of resilience responses, and calls on everyone working on increasing resilience to leverage inclusive finance to enhance the reach, speed, and impact of their work.

Strengthening Financial Systems for Climate Adaptation

As climate-related shocks become more frequent, communities need access to finance that helps them cope with and recover from damage and loss, yet current efforts to strengthen financial systems’ resilience often overlook the importance of inclusion. This paper outlines how governments and funders can foster inclusive financial systems that enhance climate adaptation and resilience.

Building Climate Resilience at Scale in the Sahel

Already reaching over half the world’s population, social protection systems present an untapped opportunity to channel climate funds to help vulnerable communities adapt to climate change, enhancing the reach, efficiency, and impact of climate finance.

Exclusion Risks in Climate-Related Financial Regulation: An Analytical Framework

This working paper presents an analytical framework to identify the potential exclusionary effect of climate-related financial sector regulation on the incentives and ability of financial service providers to lend to vulnerable segments in emerging markets and developing economies.

A Green Future for All: How Financial Services Can Build More Inclusive Carbon Markets

Inclusive carbon markets can play a role in financing a just, green transition. CGAP highlights the challenges to and opportunities for developing inclusive carbon markets, emphasizing the potential for financial services to both overcome barriers to inclusion and drive impact at scale.

8 Billion Reasons: Inclusive Finance as a Catalyst for Climate Action

We cannot tackle climate change effectively without inclusive financial services. CGAP outlines five areas for collaborative action between stakeholders working on climate change and those working on inclusive finance in order to leverage inclusive finance to scale grassroots climate action.

Investor Roadmap for Inclusive Green Growth

This collaborative report by LeapFrog Investments, Temasek and CGAP shares new research that highlights the commercial impetus to accelerate a wave of green investment into emerging markets.

Climate Adaptation, Resilience, and Financial Inclusion: A New Agenda

In this Focus Note, CGAP calls for financial inclusion to be a cornerstone of action on climate adaptation, and proposes a new agenda for collaboration between financial inclusion and climate adaptation practitioners.