The Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance is a collaboration between humanitarian, NGO, research and private sector partners, working to build resilience to climate hazards in rural and urban contexts.   

Formerly the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance, the Alliance has over a decade of experience in generating evidence of communities’ current levels of climate resilience and identifying appropriate solutions.  The Grantham Research institute has contributed leading climate resilience research and policy expertise to the Alliance since 2018 (see more below). 

Through long-term community programmes, new research and stakeholder influencing, the Alliance strives to deliver systemic change at scale and realise its vision of a world in which communities are more resilient to climate hazards, and able to thrive.  

The Alliance is powered by the Zurich Foundation.  

By 2035, alongside like-minded organisations, the Alliance aspires to positively impact 70 million people vulnerable to climate change, and 5.5 million by 2027.    

The Alliance will: 

  1. Enhance and increase the resilience of urban and rural communities to climate hazards.    
  1. Promote the widespread adoption of good climate resilience practices.    
  1. Increase the funding available for communities to improve their climate resilience.     
  1. Improve the policy environment for building community resilience to climate hazards.  

Our role 

Building on the success of the Grantham Research Institute’s climate resilience research programme of 2018–2023, as part of the Alliance we are co-developing a series of innovative new research projects, with a particular focus on adaptation policies, governance and decision-making for multi-hazard scenarios. These research projects will be implemented from 2025 onwards. We also co-lead the Alliance’s Adaptation Governance theme and support global advocacy and influencing, including setting up a new Alliance Advisory Group. 

Swenja Surminski is the Principal Investigator, with Sara Mehryar as the Research Co-Investigator and Anna Beswick as the Policy Co-Investigator for this project. 

Grantham Research Institute outputs

Research articles

Policy reports

Consultation responses

Commentaries

View all related publications here 

Keep in touch with the Grantham Research Institute at LSE
Sign up to our newsletters and get the latest analysis, research, commentary and details of upcoming events.