What if the biggest barrier to climate resilience isn’t willingness, but an economic system that’s better at pricing losses than valuing the ones we avoid? That’s a challenge occupying Leah Ramoutar, who leads Aviva’s Environmental Center of Excellence, who discussed it in a recent conversation with Linda-Eling Lee, the MSCI Institute’s founding director.

Ramoutar is proud of the integrated transition plan her team developed, which reframes transition away from a purely decarbonization-focused effort into a “whole-economy resilience challenge.” The plan weaves together four themes: the net-zero pathway, adaptation and resilience, the role of nature, and a just transition for people and communities. “They’re all different parts of the transition, but the same transition,” she says, arguing real progress means advancing all four together.

On barriers, Ramoutar says most insurers already see resilience as a business risk, not just an environmental one. The harder problem is that when a resilience investment prevents damage, “it’s often harder to demonstrate” who benefited and how much value was created — a disconnect that misaligns incentives across insurers, investors, governments and consumers. Closing that gap, she says, will require better resilience metrics, stronger public-private partnerships and mechanisms that direct capital toward loss-prevention.

Asked what’s inspired her lately, Ramoutar points to Bill McKibben’s book “Here Comes the Sun,” which highlights that more electricity in the EU last year was generated by wind and solar than by fossil fuels, a reminder, she says, that hopeful stories can be “a powerful catalyst for action.”