Katie Walsh On Financing the $86 Billion City Climate Gap

Climate change is placing cities under siege. This week alone, urban sprawls across North America, Europe, and Asia are sweltering under extreme temperatures and bracing for heavy storms and flood-bringing rains.

They need cold, hard cash to build up their defenses. But data from CDP — the OG environmental disclosure platform — shows a US$86bn funding shortfall for climate-resilient infrastructure. How can this gap be closed? And how can improved data help unlock capital for adaptation at the city level?

Katie Walsh, CDP's Head of Climate Finance for Cities, States, and Regions — and North America Lead — joins the pod to offer some answers.

She shares what she's learned over nearly ten years at the non-profit, reflecting on the evolution of climate disclosures at the corporate and city level and how they have helped build a picture of climate risk and opportunity. She also highlights the hard work underway to make climate data more useful for real-world decisions — from project planning to investment strategies.

Katie then break down the CDP's recent strategic shake-up and its pivot toward smarter tech and AI to boost data quality and usability.

If you're curious about the intersection of climate data, public finance, and real-world resilience, this is the episode for you.

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📚 To learn more about CDP's 2024 Global Snapshot on Cities (developed in partnership with the Global Covenant of Mayors), you can read the report here. You can find the full list of projects seeking financing and funding from the 2024 disclosure to CDP-ICLEI Track available on the CDP Open Data page. Keep an eye out for an upcoming report to be released by the Network for Greening the Financial System G20 Sustainable Finance Working Group which utilizes CDP data to demonstrate how companies are putting their adaptation and resilience into their transition plans. It will be made available on Insights - CDP. CDP's reporting window is now open - go to the CDP Portal to begin disclosing now. Our Help Center provides further resources. Join CDP for the CDP Reporting Tips for Local, State, and Regional Governments on July 15 at 1 pm ET for an overview of the questionnaire, and tips on reporting in 2025. Register here.