Index Insurance: a tool against poverty

This week’s web story on the IRI site gives an update to our work on using index insurance to protect farmers against some of the climate risks they face.

Index insurance remains a promising new tool to help alleviate poverty by reducing the impacts of climate shocks in the developing world. It may even increase the poor’s resiliency to climate change. In October, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society co-hosted a workshop to discuss the technical challenges that currently preclude the use of index insurance on a large scale.

“During the workshop, we learned about some of the scientific innovations that could help overcome the hurdles to scaling up insurance programs,” says IRI’s Molly Hellmuth, one of the event’s organizers and editor of the Climate and Society Publication. “However, the innovations must be balanced with the reality on the ground: we need simple, understandable and trustworthy products if impoverished communities are to use index insurance successfully.”

More than 30 experts from fields as diverse as reinsurance, climate science, economics and food security participated in the two-day workshop, which was co-hosted by the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions. Among them were representatives from the World Food Programme, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the United Nations Development Programme and Oxfam America.

Click to get a more detailed description of index insurance.

Read the rest of the story on the IRI features page.

[Image designed by Jason Rodriguez/IRI]

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