Climate change adaptation measures such as insurance

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Insurance for Climate Adaptation – Opportunities and Limitations argues that greater collaboration between the insurance industry and state policy makers, including investment in open-source risk models, could improve society’s ability to recover from disasters linked to climate change.

Adaptation involves taking action to prevent or minimise the damage the adverse effects of climate change can cause, or taking advantage of opportunities that may arise. It has been shown that well- planned, early adaptation action saves money and lives later, for example using scarce water resources more efficiently, adapting building codes to future climate conditions and extreme weather events, building flood defences and raising the levels of dykes.

Climate change adaptation has increasingly focused on building resilience so that people can cope better with climate change impacts. This agenda converges with disaster risk management, an area with its own separate set of international institutions and agreements such as the Sendai Framework.

Some stakeholders view insurance as a form of adaptation as it enables people to bounce back faster from the adverse effects of climate change. This portends insurance playing a larger role globally in driving greater resilience, both in closing current protection gaps and introducing innovative new climate coverages. There is also the hypothesis that insurance incentivises other adaptation activities that reduce loss and damage, akin to risk management practices in more traditional insurance policies. Adapting to climate change, by increasing our ability to recover from specific disasters, reducing vulnerability around the globe, and promoting both financial and physical resilience to its effects, is essential to society.