Care as Climate Infrastructure: The Invisible Part of Urban Resilience

Climate resilience and care infrastructure are usually planned — and financed — in separate silos. This panel argues they shouldn't be: there is no durable climate resilience without robust care systems, and no sustainable care economy without territorial planning that can absorb climate shocks. Drawing on recent evidence — from the IDRC-supported Climate and Care initiative to AIIB and UN Women's 2025 findings on the economic returns of care infrastructure — the session makes the case for treating care as a resilience asset with measurable returns, not a social afterthought to be accommodated after the fact. The conversation grounds this argument in practice. Building on Instituto Alziras's Climate Resilience and Care in Action course, which trained 58 municipal secretaries across 20 Brazilian municipalities in 2026, the panel brings representatives from brazilian municipalities to share how their local governments are integrating care and climate-resilience policy — including where race and gender shape who bears the heaviest costs of climate emergencies. Convened by Instituto Alziras and the Frente Nacional de Prefeitos (FNP), with the support of the Global Alliance for Care, WEDO, French Development Agency (AFD) and The Climate and Society Institute (iCS), the session closes with concrete recommendations for financiers, municipal networks, and policymakers working at the intersection of climate and care.