Who has met at least one new person here who inspired you? Every hand went up.
Who is taking home a climate adaptation topic that matters for your organisation? Every hand went up again.
Who does not want to wait until next year to start working on it? Most of the room.
That third show of hands is the founding moment of the Adaptation Exchange. The first two questions describe what a good conference does. The third describes what happens in the eleven months in between, and in most organisations the honest answer is: not much. Climate risks are analysed, reported and filed. What is missing is a place where practitioners keep working on them together, between the conferences, across sectors and across functions. That is why Daniel founded the Adaptation Exchange, and we have been building it with its members ever since.
The Adaptation Exchange is an independent international cross-sector platform, hosted by DSR Partners and carried by its member organisations from Europe, North America and beyond. The conference gave it the spark and remains a close partner; the platform itself belongs to its members and works all year round, wherever they are.
From a consultation paper to a working platform
The weeks after Düsseldorf went into a consultation paper. Together with Thomas Krick of The Adaptation Foundry, we put the idea in writing: a curated, cross-sector platform where corporates, financial institutions, insurers, solution providers and research develop practical approaches to climate adaptation, from peers for peers. We reflected the paper with numerous organisations, from industry and utilities to real estate, banks, insurers and adaptation start-ups. The feedback shaped three things: the working-group format, the rule that every result has to be usable in a company on Monday morning, and the decision that the results are open to everyone, members or not.
In May, during Climate Week Zurich, we launched the Adaptation Exchange publicly and the three working groups presented the first version of their Toolbox. Those versions were prototypes, honest and unfinished, and that was the point. From then on, the member organisations built on them, challenged and tested them. This summer, more than two dozen companies from several countries, among them BASF, Bayer and the Otto Group, put the tools through real business cases, alongside international academic and financial institutions.
On 6 October, the Corporate Adaptation Toolbox goes live at the Building Bridges Conference in Geneva. It carries the name Pathway to Resilience, and it is the work of more than 30 member organisations over nine months. It is built for every organisation that wants to take its first or next step towards climate resilience. Free of charge, also accessible without membership, available at www.adaptation-exchange.org.
Your exclusive introduction, in Düsseldorf. We bring the Toolbox to the Handelsblatt Corporate Climate Adaptation Conference on 14 and 15 October. Each tool gets its own hands-on workshop with the people who built it. Every participant works through the Assessment, the Business Case and the Adaptation Stack in small groups, on their own company or on a prepared case, and leaves with first results. Three workshops, one afternoon, Track „Tangible Management Tools“. Come and experience the tools live, first-hand, with the members who built them.
The gap the Toolbox closes
In every working-group session, companies from every sector described the same situation. Most organisations have analysed their climate risks. Far fewer have decided where and how to adapt, what it may cost, and what is already available to them. These are three different questions, and they usually sit in three different departments. The Toolbox gives companies a starting point to answer these questions and to move corporate climate adaptation from awareness to action.
Climate Resilience Maturity Assessment: how prepared is your organisation?
Ask that question in a company and the answer differs from floor to floor. Sustainability sees the reporting, risk sees the register, operations sees the production hall in July. The Assessment, presented by Daniel Schleifer of Vonovia, creates a shared basis for the discussion across functions. Twenty-seven questions across seven dimensions, from governance and strategy to assets, people, value chain and monitoring, differentiated for producing industry, financial services and service providers. Part of the value lies in answering it together: a prework page splits the questions into work packages so that sustainability, risk and operations prepare their input and then complete it as one group. You leave with a maturity profile, your priority gaps and a recommended action for each of them.
Climate Adaptation Business Case: how much can you invest, and what does it return?
Every adaptation measure is an investment decision, and investment decisions are made in the terms finance uses: cash flow, payback and the budget a case can carry. The Business Case, presented by Dr. Simon Wagner of PwC, puts a number on the table. Five key figures from the annual report and the payback period your company expects are enough for a first run. The tool calculates the range a company can invest in adaptation, split into one-off and ongoing measures, and quantifies the expected returns across eight value levers, from avoided losses and business interruption to insurability, financing conditions and strategic market position. The result is an initial case at company level, a first set of arguments to take into the discussion with finance and management.
Adaptation Stack: which solutions fit your exposure?
Once it is clear where action is needed, the question of implementation follows, and here most teams underestimate what already exists. The Adaptation Stack, presented by Thomas Krick of The Adaptation Foundry, shows how much is already out there: more than 250 adaptation solutions in 26 categories, from engineered and nature-based to digital and financial. You select the climate risks and value chain steps that matter to you, and the Stack identifies the most relevant solution categories and points to providers in each. The market for adaptation solutions is fragmented and largely unknown, the Stack structures a part of it and makes it visible.
Each tool works on its own and links to the other two. All three deal with physical climate impacts: flooding, heat, heavy rain, storm, drought and wildfire. Their results are indicative and open the conversation inside the company; a site-level risk analysis and a project appraisal remain separate steps. Use them in sequence, or start with the one that matches where your organisation stands today.
Why practitioners, and why together
One of our testers, Heather Grabbe of Bruegel, described the effect better than we could: „The great value of the tool is to get companies to look seriously and systematically at the risks across their operations and supply chains, building a more holistic picture that connects the dots between operations, finance, procurement and strategy. Then they start to see climate adaptation as an on-going and increasingly important part of business strategy and financial planning, not just a set of compliance requirements.“
That is the shift the Toolbox is built for. Climate adaptation cannot be solved by one function alone, and it cannot be solved by one company alone. Florian Feigs of BASF Agricultural Solutions put it plainly in our working group: „No company can build climate resilience alone. By sharing knowledge, methods, tools and experiences, we can strengthen supply chains, accelerate innovation and deliver practical solutions.“
The working groups continue. The versions going live on 6 October are the versions the members will keep developing, with every company that uses them and shares its experience.
Back to Düsseldorf
A year after the show of hands, we return to the Handelsblatt Corporate Climate Adaptation Conference on 14 and 15 October with the Toolbox in hand. This is the place to get your personal introduction to all three tools. On the first afternoon, we run three consecutive workshops, one per tool, each hosted by members of the working group that built it. You sit in a small group and run the tool end to end. Prepare for a LIVE and interactive session.
And this year, we will ask the three questions again. We already know the answer to the third one. The difference is that now there is a place to start on Monday.
Advancing Climate Adaptation. Together.