As our climate changes, “we are vulnerable to unacceptable risks of failures in functionality, durability, and safety,” said Alice C. Hill, former senior director for resiliency policy for the National Security Council, as she launched Resilience Week at the Wilson Center. During the week, members of the UN Resilience Academy joined representatives from the Wilson Center, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Hoover Institute for in-depth discussions on building global resilience in the face of environmental change. “Resilience is proving necessary to withstand the disruptions to our very interconnected systems,” she said.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has identified climate change as a “high fiscal risk for the United States federal government,” said Hill, who is currently a research fellow at the Hoover Institute. So far in 2017 alone, 15 hurricanes, droughts, and fires have cost the United States more than $1 billion each. Extreme heat has buckled railroad ties and melted airport tarmacs, endangering economic trade and worker safety.

But it’s not just money; our national security is also at risk. In Virginia’s Hampton Roads area, 30 military installations—including the largest naval port in the world—face a dangerous combination of sea-level rise and subsidence. In 1960, sunny day “nuisance flooding” kept workers from getting on base an average of 1.6 days a year. By 2014, the average had risen to 7.3 days per year.

Why do we resist investing in resilience? Both our optimism bias—we think it won’t affect us—and our recency bias—since it hasn’t happened recently, it’s not going to happen again—keep us from preparing for disasters and for future climate change.

The political risks of taking action can delay it.  Hill cited “Not In My Term” syndrome: Many politicians are unwilling to tackle climate change in their first term and prefer to leave that to future policymakers to address.

“Not everybody has had the ‘aha’ moment to connect this [climate] risk that is occurring,” Hill said. Her “aha moment” was creating the Department of Homeland Security’s adaption plan for climate change in 2009. Once she began to understand the risks, she realized “we have to prioritize building ‘resiliently’ and we also have to prioritize understanding our interconnectedness.”

“By necessity, humans will adapt,” Hill said, and we are. We can learn from each other and go back to basics. Building codes work as long as we “incorporate future risk in our designs.” After Hurricane Andrew devastated Florida in 1992, the state of Florida established the strongest wind standards in the United States for its building codes. In 2004, four hurricanes hit Florida. “They had the perfect test case when they saw the newly constructed buildings did far better,” said Hill.

For every one dollar we invest in risk mitigation, we save at least four dollars in the recovery phase.  Lloyds of London found green infrastructure can cost 30 times less than building grey infrastructure, such as a seawall.  We can learn from our global neighbors. Kuala Lumpur’s Smart Tunnel can transport traffic—but it can also handle flood waters if needed. China is making 30 cities into giant sponges that can soak up floodwaters.

Building sustainable infrastructure includes building a stronger human infrastructure. The members of the Resilience Academy, who come from every corner of the globe, use research and collaboration to put into action resilience measures that improve livelihoods in the face of uncertainty. And resilience doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective. “Simply knowing your neighbor increases the likelihood of your survival,” said Hill.