Resilient health: a new investment frontier

While climate-driven health risks create significant macroeconomic exposure, they will also drive major shifts in market needs and demand. In parallel, policy commitments and public investments, rapidly evolving technologies, and the emergence of blended-finance investments create a rare alignment between market need, innovation readiness, policy momentum and a growing pipeline of innovative companies. Now is the time for investors to seize this resilient health opportunity, to drive both growth and societal resilience.

Climate change has become a systemic financial risk – and its health impacts are one of the most material, least priced-in drivers of global economic volatility. These health risks directly affect productivity, insurance liabilities, healthcare expenditures, sovereign resilience and supply-chain stability – all key considerations for investors focused on long‑term value.

By 2050, climate-driven health effects could generate $12.5 trillion in economic losses and cause 14.5 million additional deaths, while anti-microbial resistance could lead to a 3.8% drop in global GDP. Workforce productivity losses due to climate change’s health impacts could exceed $1.5 trillion across just the food and agriculture, lived environment and healthcare sectors. Large global health companies alone are expected to face annual losses of $31 billion by 2050 due to increased operational expenditure costs, lost revenues due to business interruptions and the costs of repairing assets.

Such impacts are accelerating demand and expanding the investible universe towards technologies and services that protect populations and maintain continuity of care. A few examples include:

A growing evidence base demonstrates that resilience investments outperform traditional expectations. Research finds that every $1 invested in climate resilience yields more than $10 in economic benefits, and average economic annual returns of over 20% (up to 79% in health services). The Boston Consulting Group estimates that the adaptation and resilience market could reach between $0.5 and $1.3 trillion by 2030, with a 7:1 benefit-cost ratio for companies in healthcare and life sciences.

World Bank analysis on health-sector climate adaptation solutions confirms this trend, with estimated ROIs (including healthcare cost savings) of:

These opportunities are being fueled by market-shaping developments, including the acceleration of technological innovation, life-science companies’ efforts, enabling public policies, and significant levels of catalytic and concessional investment.

Technologies that once seemed experimental are now investible and ready to be deployed at scale. Medical drone delivery networks have been piloted and proven their feasibility across emerging and high-income markets. AI‑driven early‑warning systems are enabling insurers, hospitals and governments to anticipate heatwaves, vector-borne outbreaks and infrastructure strain. Energy-efficient ACs have proven their cost-effectiveness, personal devices can effectively monitor health risks and parametric insurance products are now deployed globally.

Life‑science companies are also adapting portfolios: some report that 50-80% of their R&D pipelines now align with diseases exacerbated by climate change. Heat‑stable formulations, new vaccines designed for climate-driven conditions and point-of-use diagnostic tools are progressing rapidly.

A new financing architecture is emerging to drive innovation and early-stage investment in resilient health. The Climate & Health Funders Coalition brings over 35 philanthropies together and has committed $300 million over three years to support innovation and early scaling. Multilateral Development Banks have agreed on a Joint Roadmap for Climate & Health and are expanding investments, with an interest in crowding in private capital. Instruments focused on incubating and scaling impact ventures in this field are being launched across geographies, including by PATH / the Global Innovation Fund, Temasek Trust, Grand Challenges Canada, AVPN, Zinc and others. These mechanisms will over the coming years grow the pipeline of investable solutions and ventures, mitigate startup risks, and create structured entry points for equity, credit and infrastructure investors.

Finally, policy commitments are sending strong clear market signals with governments aligning rapidly around this health resilience agenda. G7 Health Ministers have called for scaled investment from public and private actors, while the G20 has committed to supporting climate‑adapted health technologies and digital health infrastructure. On Health Day at COP28, over 120 countries and their financing partners made the first global political commitment on the topic, and committed over $1 billion in financing. The EU’s Life Sciences Strategy includes €300 million for procurement of climate‑resilient health innovations, strengthening commercial incentives for developers.

Resilient health is emerging as a high‑growth frontier for patient capital – scalable, investible, risk-reducing, and aligned with accelerating global policy and market momentum.

Given these strong fundamentals, the World Economic Forum is launching a new workstream on Investing in Resilient Health to help foster the market information, enabling policy environments and risk-mitigation partnerships needed to unlock investment at scale towards resilient health. This workstream will map investible solutions, conduct bankability and risk–return analyses, and convene Investment Dialogues with policymakers, catalytic investors and commercial investors.

Investors keen to act on this opportunity in resilient health are invited to join our effort!