Global heating has firmly moved from a future scenario to a present-day business reality. In January 2025, the Palisades and Eaton fires ripped through Southern California at the culmination of what was then the hottest decade on record (opens a new window). The preceding 12 months had been the warmest ever recorded globally, and the first calendar year in which global mean temperature exceeded 1.5°C above the 1850–1900 average. But in 2026, even those records are under threat.
As temperatures rise, they are increasingly accompanied by climate volatility. Across much of the Northern Hemisphere, extreme heat and drought followed one of the wettest winters in recent history, leaving soil moisture levels depleted and fueling heightened wildfire activity. Elsewhere, severe flooding, storms, and prolonged droughts continue to affect communities and businesses across multiple continents. The economic consequences of these changes are impossible to ignore. In the EU alone, weather- and climate-related extremes caused an estimated €822bn in economic losses (opens a new window) between 1980 and 2024. Roughly a quarter of that damage occurred during the last four years alone.
As global heating reshapes weather patterns, infrastructure pressures, and catastrophe exposures, climate resilience is becoming inseparable from insurability itself. A hotter, more volatile world has already arrived, and further change is still to come. To navigate this world successfully, organizations must understand their exposures, invest in adaptation, and integrate climate considerations into their future planning. Increasingly, resilience is a prerequisite – for securing insurance, accessing capital, and ensuring long-term business viability.