Redefining the Future: Insights from Our Climate Solution Focus Group
Project Frame recently convened a group of experts and stakeholders for a focus group dedicated to a critical task: refining the definition of a "Climate Solution."
As Frame expands its scope to include adaptation & resilience (A&R) alongside mitigation, ensuring we have a clear, inclusive, and precise shared terminology is more important than ever. The Focus Group followed Chatham House Rule to encourage open discussion and honest feedback.
By establishing a common understanding, Frame can better target proposals for a future Adaptation & Resilience Working Group (to be announced in late 2026). This group will aim to close existing operational gaps that currently hinder investors from making equitable, high-impact investments in businesses that deploy vital adaptation and resilience solutions.
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The Challenge: Beyond Mitigation
Historically, Project Frame defined a climate solution strictly through the lens of greenhouse gas (GHG) impact. Frame described a climate solution as “an intervention, product, or service that intends to and shows evidence it can achieve GHG impact.” Impact was defined as a real-world change resulting from, or made possible by, an organization's goods or services. This impact is assumed to be a "positive" outcome unless explicitly stated otherwise.
However, as global warming accelerates, we must also account for solutions that address the immediate effects of climate change and global warming—such as extreme environmental conditions and downstream harms—rather than just the causes (GHG emissions).
The Focus Group reacted and responded to this proposed new definition as a starting point in order to refine it into a final definition:
"Products, services, or technologies designed to displace a status quo or incumbent that does not adequately address the causes or effects of climate change."
Additionally, participants were provided the following context to the working definition:
“These solutions often aim for systemic change at scale. Investors can support novel solutions in their earliest stages or enable expansion and adoption of mature solutions across markets.
The immediate cause of climate change is greenhouse gases (GHGs). Climate change mitigation includes activities that reduce, remove, and/ or avoid greenhouse gas emissions.
The immediate effects of climate change are extreme environmental conditions, which in turn create complex downstream harms. Climate adaptation & resilience includes activities to adjust to current and future climate effects, and strengthen the capacity of people, infrastructure, and natural systems to withstand, respond to, and recover from climate shocks and stresses.”
Nearly all of the twenty participants scored between 6 and 8 on an initial poll of the completeness, clarity and precision of the definition, where 1 was "Strongly Disagree" and 10 was "Strongly Agree." Notably, one individual selected a score of 1, arguing that Climate Solution was already known to refer to mitigation only.
Stress-Testing the Definition
To facilitate suggestions for new language and pull out points of disagreement with the proposed definition, participants engaged in "Stress Tests" using real-world scenarios. These discussions highlighted several key friction points:
Technology vs. Nature: Is a biological asset, like an urban tree-planting program, a "technology"? Many argued for broader language to include nature-based interventions.
Investability vs. Impact: Does a solution have to be a market-driven business to count? While Project Frame serves the investor community, participants debated whether the definition should exclude non-profit or volunteer-led efforts that provide critical resilience.
The "Do No Harm" Principle: Using examples like seawalls (which protect infrastructure but may harm marine habitats) or GMO seeds (which aid drought resistance but may price out smallholder farmers), the groups discussed whether a true "solution" must include equity, accessibility, or a "Net Benefit" requirement.
Systemic Change vs. Incrementalism: Participants questioned if incremental improvements, like hurricane-resistant homes, constitute a systemic change at scale or simply a better version of the status quo and whether either or both approaches should be included in the definition.
Key Takeaways & New Directions
The breakout sessions yielded diverse perspectives on how to sharpen our language:
Specificity Matters: Suggestions included adding "anthropogenic" before climate change and replacing vague terms like "adequately address" with more active verbs like "mitigate," "alleviate," or "prevent".
Intentionality & Evidence: Participants emphasized that a solution must be evaluated on its primary purpose and its evidence-based impact.
Direct vs. Indirect: There is a need to distinguish between direct interventions and indirect market signals (like insurance premiums that penalize homes in flood zones, effectively forcing people to move or "harden" their homes). Co-benefits and risks of harm should also be considered.
The Status Quo: Participants noted that not all solutions necessarily displace an incumbent. Some solutions may improve upon a status quo, and others may simply exist alongside an incumbent technology.
What’s Next?
This focus group was a vital feedback tool to arrive at a useful definition for the Frame community. The Prime Coalition team used the focus group participants’ feedback to improve upon the proposed Climate Solution definition:
“An intervention, product, or service that is expected to directly or indirectly remove and/ or avoid greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation solution) or strengthen the capacity of systems to avoid, adjust to, and/or recover from current and future climate shocks and stresses (adaptation and/or resilience solution).”
Note that this is a tiered definition to provide more specificity, in which both “mitigation solution” and “adaptation/or resilience solution" are embedded within the overarching “climate solution” definition. You may view these definitions as well as many others on the official Project Frame Glossary.
As Frame continues its co-learning and knowledge sharing journey around adaptation & resilience, it will continue to add to and update the glossary. If you have any questions or concerns about any of the glossary entries, please feel free to contact us at impact@primecoalition.org.
As a reminder, Project Frame will continue to offer future engagements to improve mitigation guidance and champion field-wide adoption of the forward-looking emissions impact methodology.
Together, we are building the alignment and accountability needed to accelerate the climate transition.
