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Dear Reader, A warm welcome to our fourth and final Newsletter Edition in 2020! A year ago, it was hard to imagine the substantial changes that our lives were about to undergo. As we familiarized with social distancing, quarantine and face masks, we had to acknowledge that climate change can’t be put on hold while the world is facing a major health and economic turmoil. Hence, with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on top of climate disasters, 2020 has truly become unprecedented - a year of compounded risks at global scale. As the InsuResilience Global Partnership strives to increase resilience levels of the poor and most vulnerable, this new risk environment calls for action and the combined efforts of our members. The additional economic and social burden posed by Covid-19 has depleted many developing countries’ fiscal capacity, making them more vulnerable to climate shocks. It is therefore more important than ever to provide accessible and effective Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance (CDRFI) solutions to buffer extreme events and enable a green recovery. 2021 will undoubtedly come with many challenges. But by harnessing the strength of cooperation, we are able to turn them into opportunities. Facilitating cooperation has also been at the center of our InsuResilience Global Partnership Forum that took place in a virtual setting from 7 – 10 December. It was inspiring to exchange ideas on how to protect development in a changing climate risk environment across large distances and several time zones! We were particularly excited to soft-launch the InsuResilience Centre of Excellence on Gender-smart Solutions which marks a pioneering move towards integrating gender considerations into CDRFI. For a taste of those four days, we invite you to have a look at the articles below and explore the new Centre of Excellence. For this newsletter edition, we are excited to feature a series of our members’ stories of the year, offering you a glimpse into ambitious CDRFI action from around the globe. The Covid-19 crisis called for quick adjustments and we are impressed by the efforts undertaken by members of the InsuResilience Global Partnership to address this challenge. Thanks to their adaptive capacity and energy, 2020 also came with many successes and intensified collaboration. Before letting you dive into the articles, we hope that despite the turbulences in 2020, you are bringing this year to a positive end. We are looking forward to jointly delivering on the Vision 2025 in the upcoming year and strengthening collaboration towards a more resilient world. With this in mind, we wish you and your loved ones peaceful weeks ahead and most importantly a healthy transition into 2021!
With kind regards, The InsuResilience Secretariat Team
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Rewind: The Insuresilience global partnership forum 2020
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4 days, 7 sessions & 1076 participants: The InsuResilience Global Partnership Forum 2020
The InsuResilience Annual Forum virtually took place virtually from 7 - 10 December and brought together representatives from governments, international organizations, civil society, the private sector and academia, thereby representing the largest gathering of members from across the globe. This year’s Annual Forum contributed to dialogue under the theme „Protecting development in a changing climate risk environment.“
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Soft Launch of the Centre of Excellence on Gender-smart Solutions
The Centre of Excellence on Gender-smart Solutions was soft-launched at the High-Level Event on Day 1 of the InsuResilience Annual Forum. It represents a unique knowledge-sharing platform and repository of information, guiding practitioners and policy makers on innovative approaches to transform Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance towards more gender equality.
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In focus: in retrospect of the insuresilience global partnership in 2020
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InsuResilience Solutions Fund – Wrap up of the latest activities
Check out the latest information on the InsuResilience Solutions Fund's (ISF)
4th Call for Proposals that is open until 29 January 2021.
This year, the ISF especially welcomed project concepts targeting the sectors most vulnerable to the impacts of the pandemic, such as critical infrastructure, emergency relief and financial support to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.
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A glimpse inside 2020 at Micro Insurance Company
2020 is a year likely none of us will ever forget. Covid-19, social distancing, masks and a world in quarantine. It was a painful year to witness as the pandemic caused irreversible economic and social distress, in addition to the loss of so many lives. As an insurance company, Micro Insurance did their best to take action to help those affected during the Covid-19 pandemic by paying claims as fast as they could and providing people with the safety net that is insurance.
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Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility - Putting 2020 in perspective: How we levelled-up and pivoted in the face of Covid-19 and the increasing effects of a changing climate on our members
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The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility reflects on its actions as an insurance company that helps their members to achieve developmental prospects. In 2020, their response had to meet the challenges posed by climate change and Covid-19 that were simultaneously affecting Central American and Caribbean countries.
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World Food Programme - 2020, the year of compound risks
The Covid-19 pandemic the most difficult challenge for governments and communities this year, particularly for some of the most vulnerable populations. The World Food Programme (WFP) put a lot of effort into adjusting programmes to compounded risks of climate, economic and health crises, by developing insurance product distribution according to public health measures. And despite the challenges of 2020, WFP reached several milestones in providing effective and appropriate climate risk management tools across the world.
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VisionFund in 2020 - The ARDIS pays out
VisionFund’s innovative ARDIS program – the Africa, Asia and Americas Resilience in Disaster Insurance Scheme – works in partnership with the German KfW Development Bank’s InsuResilience Investment Fund and Global Parametrics, and constitutes the world’s largest non-governmental climate-insurance programme. This landmark transaction, launched in 2018, supports VisionFund’s pioneering recovery lending efforts, by providing the organisation with access to both contingent credit and risk transfer.
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African Risk Capacity & KfW - Coordination, adaptability & cash: Looking back at a USD 23.1m operation in a year of Covid-19
Following drought conditions during the agricultural season in November 2019, the Government of Senegal and Start Network, qualified for African Risk Capacity (ARC) Limited insurance that resulted in a pay-out of USD 23.1 million in December 2019. This article shows how the innovative drought insurance product of the ARC Group enabled life-saving assistance provided to Senegalese families and reflects on the lessons learned by the Government of Senegal, Start Network and ARC over the course of 2020.
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Story on the impact of African Risk Capacity payout in Senegal: The village of Ndouff rises from its own ashes
In Senegal, more than 200,000 people have benefited from the ARC payout, allowing for cash transfers and nutritional supplement for children under five, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Learn how people in the village of Ndouff, located at 70 km from the Senegalese capital Dakar, describe the impacts of the payout on their lives.
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SLYCAN Trust - Inclusive risk transfer mechanisms and Sri Lanka’s agricultural sector: Stakeholder engagement, research, and knowledge product development
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The SYLCAN Trust has worked together with several partners within the Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance space in order to implement climate risk transfer mechanisms in Sri Lanka’s agricultural sector inlcuding stakeholder engagement, research and knowledge product development. Timely implementation faced many challenges this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The SYLCAN Trust, however, was able to adapt projects to Covid-19 related health guidelines and restrictions and moved onto a virtual platform wherever possible.
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Feed the Future - Quality certification to ensure investments in index insurance pay development dividends
Despite the simple idea of parametric insurance, many index insurance contracts still fail when families lose their livelihoods to disasters. A new certification Quality Index Insurance Certification (QUIIC) is now available in parts of Africa with the potential to cut uncertainty and eliminate the need for investments in special training to assess whether an index insurance policy is a worthwhile investment in the first place. QUIIC is an independent collaboration between researchers at the University of California, Davis and the Kenya-based Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development.
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Case Study: The United Nations Development Programme’s risk financing and insurance development support in Vietnam
Recurring disaster events in Vietnam impact the lives of the most vulnerable the hardest, damaging their homes and livelihoods.
Therefore, disaster and climate risk financing should form part of an integrated disaster risk management strategy. Taking this into account, the United Nations Development Programme supports the Government of Vietnam to identify relevant risk transfer mechanisms.
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InsuRisk Report: Disaster risk and readiness for insurance solutions in Small Island Developing States
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The latest InsuRisk Special Report by the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security gives deeper insights into current environmental and development challenges, alongside needs for Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance instruments in Small Island Developing States and their status. The report offers transparent and comparable baseline information on countries’ climate and disaster risks and their readiness to accept risk transfer through insurance solutions.
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Protecting low-income communities through climate insurance: Achievements from the InsuResilience Investment Fund
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The InsuResilience Investment Fund (IIF) launched its new report on climate insurance in developing countries. To date, the IIF has helped to protect 25 million poor & climate-vulnerable people from the effects of climate change. As the IIF has now reached the halfway point in its lifetime, this report takes stock of its achievements and shares valuable lessons from its first six years of operation.
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New Members To The Partnership
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A warm welcome to our new members since October 2020! The InsuResilience Global Partnership now counts 93 members.
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United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) |
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International Fund For Agricultural Development (IFAD) |
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African College of Insurance & Social Protection |
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Platform for Agricultural Risk Management (PARM) |
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25-26 Jan 2021 |
Climate Adaptation Summit 2021
Online |
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17-19 March 2021 |
The International Conference on Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (ICDRI)
Online |
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