Enabling investments in systemic risk-informed sustainable development: lessons from the enabling resilience investment initiative

Abstract Rising climate impacts, biodiversity loss, and socio-economic disruptions are intensifying systemic risks that threaten sustainable development and overwhelm existing investment approaches. Despite growing recognition of the need for adaptation and disaster risk reduction, investment in resilience remains substantially below what is required, constrained by persistent barriers including fragmented governance, misaligned incentives, data and capability gaps, and limitations in conventional economic appraisal. This Perspective examines how these barriers can be addressed through a mission-oriented innovation approach, drawing on lessons from the Enabling Resilience Investment (ERI) initiative. We critically evaluate the ERI initiative as an applied effort to integrate systemic risk into decision-making and to unlock investment in resilience. The analysis clarifies the theoretical underpinnings linking systemic risk and investment behaviour, maps barriers to targeted interventions, and assesses evidence from nine place-based case studies across Australia. These cases demonstrate how integrated, participatory, and place-based approaches—combined with advances in multi-hazard risk assessment, robust decision-making under uncertainty, and value-based economic framing—can enhance risk literacy, strengthen cross-sector collaboration, and generate actionable investment cases. While outcomes to date are incremental and context-dependent, early signals of policy influence and institutional uptake highlight pathways for scaling. We identify four priorities to accelerate impact: sustained investment in capabilities and measurement frameworks, strengthened governance and appraisal mandates, alignment of incentives to support long-term resilience, and programmatic funding to enable learning and scaling. These insights are transferable beyond Australia and contribute to advancing systemic, risk-informed investment strategies and actionable responses to global environmental change.