Paris Resilience Priorities 2026–2027
A concise synthesis of recurring priorities, practical recommendations, areas of convergence and questions that require further work.
The Unaddressed Issues We Need to Solve
About the Summit
Global leaders. Critical conversations. Practical resilience.
Why This Summit, Why Now
Businesses are no longer facing one disruption at a time. Cyber incidents can interrupt suppliers; energy or materials shortages can stop production; climate shocks can damage infrastructure and widen insurance gaps; and workforce pressure can slow response and recovery. Yet these risks are still commonly managed through separate functions, plans and reporting lines.
The Paris Resilience Summit is a one-day European executive forum organised by the Global Council for Business Resilience (GCBR), with École des Ponts Business School and the UNESCO Chair for Futures of Value as co-organisers. It convenes business leaders, institutional representatives, researchers and resilience practitioners to examine eleven connected challenges and develop practical recommendations.
Across keynotes, panel debates and closed executive roundtables, participants compare how disruption travels through interconnected systems and identify actions organisations can take before a local shock becomes a wider economic cascade.
Why these issues need to be considered together
GCBR’s analysis of the 2024 and 2025 disruption landscape found recurring pathways through which one shock amplifies another. A climate event can interrupt power or transport, expose digital dependencies, delay supply chains, pressure liquidity and leave smaller suppliers carrying the consequences. The central lesson is simple: no organisation is resilient on its own. Its continuity depends on the resilience of its suppliers, infrastructure, workforce, financial partners, public systems and operating environment.
Why a systems view matters
Altares
71,100 French business failures were recorded over the 12 months to mid-2026.
EIOPA
Only around one quarter of losses from extreme events in Europe were insured between 1980 and 2024.
CEVIPOF
In France, the 2026 barometer found that only 22 per cent of respondents trusted politics — underlining the coordination challenge when effective response depends on cooperation between public and private actors.
Four connected areas of discussion
The programme groups the Summit’s eleven questions into four areas. The purpose is not to treat them as separate tracks, but to make the dependencies between them visible.
- 01
Digital power, autonomy and governance
Digital Sovereignty; Cyber Resilience and Agentic Autonomy; and Risk, Compliance and Security ask who controls the systems organisations depend on, how autonomous threats change the speed of defence, and where accountability sits when regulation, technology and operations move at different speeds.
- 02
Supply chains and critical systems
Supply Chain Resilience; Critical Materials and Resource Security; Infrastructure Resilience; and Food System Resilience examine dependencies across suppliers, energy, water, materials, transport, digital networks and food production — systems in which a disruption rarely stays within one organisation or sector.
- 03
Financing risk, climate and adaptation
Climate Investment Ratio and The Uninsurable World examine whether capital is reaching adaptation at the required pace and who carries risk when traditional insurance and risk-transfer models become less available or affordable.
- 04
People and the economic backbone
Human Resilience and New Technology and SME Resilience focus on cognitive capacity, leadership, continuity and recovery. SMEs are especially important because their failure can travel quickly through employment, local services and larger organisations’ supplier networks.
Collaborative Confluence in practice
It is not designed as a traditional conference. Through Collaborative Confluence — GCBR’s convening model — the Summit creates the conditions for business, institutions, academia, civil society and practitioners to compare evidence, challenge assumptions and develop practical responses across organisational boundaries.
The event does not claim that eleven systemic challenges can be solved in a single day. Its purpose is more credible and more useful: to put different perspectives in the same room, expose where assumptions conflict, identify areas of agreement and formulate recommendations that leaders can test and develop after the Summit. Divergence is part of the value. The outputs will distinguish areas of convergence from questions that remain unresolved.
Marina PeikovaFounder and President, Global Council for Business Resilience
“We are not bringing people to Paris because we expect one room to solve every systemic problem in a day. We are bringing them together because no single discipline sees the whole picture. A cyber leader, insurer, infrastructure operator, policymaker, scientist and SME owner will understand different parts of the same risk. Our role is to create the conditions for those perspectives to meet, challenge one another and produce recommendations leaders can use.”
Martin CalnanUNESCO Chair for Futures of Value (FAST)
“Resilience is systemic by definition. This has always been true. However, until recently it could be broken down into manageable pieces and could be addressed from a functional perspective: supply chain or energy or operations… Each had their own risk mitigation strategies and plans. And even if they were not perfectly orchestrated, at least each function was supposed to ensure that the whole would continue to operate. Or so the theory went. Times have changed! We live in a state of permanent, multiple and cascading crises. The convenient assumption that we can isolate any one crisis from another is not only false, it has become dangerous. This is not time to despair. Nor is it time to refuse to see the new normal. It is a time for honest conversations. This is our invitation. Join us in Paris!”
Expected outputs
Subject to the discussions held and participant confidentiality, the organisers intend to publish practical outputs after the event.
Three non-attributed roundtable briefs
Summaries from the executive roundtables on SME Resilience, Food System Resilience and Infrastructure Resilience, capturing recommendations without attributing individual comments.
SME Resilience Brief
Key challenges, needs and practical priorities for strengthening SME preparedness, continuity and recovery.
Food System Resilience Brief
Insights on climate pressure, fertiliser dependency, farming models, pricing, governance and business continuity across fragile food systems.
Infrastructure Resilience Brief
Key reflections on moving from protecting assets to redesigning cities, transport, energy, water and digital systems for future conditions.
Directions for follow-up
Where the discussions identify a clear need and willing contributors, GCBR will set out possible next steps for research, tools or collaboration. These will be framed as proposals for continued work, not as commitments made on behalf of all participants.
The future belongs to the resilient.
Who should attend
A curated executive gathering for leaders navigating the geopolitical, economic, social, and technological forces reshaping business resilience.
In the tradition of cross-sector executive dialogue — at an intimate scale — the Summit brings together senior decision-makers from business, government, academia, and civil society for one day of actionable dialogue on the issues others avoid.
Business leadership
- CEOs, CFOs, and C-suite executives
- Board members and non-executive directors
- Managing directors and regional presidents
Functional & operational leaders
- Heads of Risk, Resilience, and Business Continuity
- Chief Information Officers and Chief Security Officers
- Procurement, supply chain, and infrastructure directors
- Insurance buyers, risk managers, and captive managers
- Audit, compliance, and third-party risk leaders
Public & civic leadership
- Government ministers, policymakers, and regulators
- International organisation and civil society leaders
- Investors and resilience-focused financiers
- Academics, researchers, and think-tank experts
- 150 curated guests — senior profiles, not mass attendance
- Leaders from business, government, academia, and civil society
- One day of debate, roundtables, and executive networking in Paris
Three defining questions
Practical questions for leaders navigating geopolitical, economic, and technological transformation — the way leading global forums frame the decade ahead.
Question 01
How can we respond to risks that are already materialising?
Move from abstract risk registers to decisive action — across geopolitical shock, operational failure, cyber events, and financial exposure.
Question 02
How can we build frameworks that work across silos?
Combine strategic, economic, social, and technological lenses — because fragmentation is now the greater threat than any single risk category.
Question 03
How can we prepare for the next wave of disruption?
Anticipate how geoeconomic rivalry, AI adoption, supply chain stress, and institutional fragility will reshape business over the decade ahead.
Why Attend?
Unique Perspectives
Hear from leaders who confront the issues others avoid — across sectors, borders and disciplines.
Actionable Solutions
Move beyond diagnosis to practical frameworks you can apply within your organisation.
Powerful Networking
Connect with executives, policymakers, academics and resilience practitioners from around the world.
Build Collective Resilience
Contribute to a shared agenda for stronger institutions, communities and economies.
Organisers
Organised by
The Paris Resilience Summit is organised by the Global Council for Business Resilience (GCBR), with École des Ponts Business School and the UNESCO Chair for Futures of Value as co-organisers.
Co-organiser
