Global Partners Summit

Extreme heat continues to represent a vital block to be resolved within climate adaptation as its impacts are far reaching and penetrate health, productivity and resilience at a systemic level. As a result, the  Global Partners Summit served as a strategic learning and collaboration convening  designed to strengthen collective impact across the growing ecosystem of organizations working on extreme heat and health. The objectives of the Summit were to:

• Bring together practitioners and partners working on heat-health action to share strategies, implementation experiences, learning, and evidence-based solutions that deliver people-centered impact.
• Develop a shared ambition for impact and scale, grounded in a common narrative, cohesive messaging, and aligned definitions of success across the field.
• Explore pathways to scale heat-health solutions, including through policy influence, institutionalization, financing mechanisms, and cross-sectoral collaboration.

Three Horizons Framework

To anchor the convening towards strengthening an emerging ecosystem of actors working on extreme heat and health, the team employed a foresight framework from the field of future studies, alongside participatory design methods to structure discussion and collaboration.

The Three Horizons model helps groups examine the current system, surface emerging innovations, and identify pathways for transformation. By looking beyond immediate operational challenges, the framework encourages participants to explore how today's practices, partnerships, and ideas can collectively shape a more resilient and effective field for protecting populations from extreme heat.

The framework was used to help structure the convening by

• Focusing on mapping current evidence, operational realities, and system bottlenecks across the partner landscape
• Using speculative design to imagine preferable futures for vulnerable populations
• Facilitated alignment on the transition by identifying system shifts, strategic bets, and collective commitments

Additionally, to underline behavioral incentives, the team also deployed a simulation session where participants were assigned specific roles, different from their professional roles, within a specific heat-related crisis. Participants were expected to use predefined interventions to foster collaboration through resource negotiations and trade-offs for optimal outcomes.

Learnings and Next Steps

The Summit helped many participants to collectively reframe their understanding of heat as a systemic issue extending to not just health but also shaping agriculture, livelihoods, and infrastructure. They agreed the real challenge isn't strategy but implementation—closing the gap between ideas, securing funding, and scaling through incremental shifts in strategy. This required the group to interrogate why existing  institutions fall short before building new ones. Lastly, the collective group of actors laid steps for the future such as sustaining the new network with accountability, engaging the private sector beyond funding, and pushing the agenda upward to bridge funding and on-the-ground implementation. What began as a strategic alignment exercise concluded as a standing commitment to remain accountable towards each other to turn heat resilience into scaled practice.