Climate Change Insurance: Not Your Typical Policy
The climate change conference at Poznań took the day off yesterday in observance of the Muslim holiday Eid. Today, the UNFCCC is back in full swing in critical negotiations about how to mitigate climate change and its risks for developing countries.
For them, if the “big” polluters don’t meet their goals, climate change can mean the destruction of fragile ecosystems, food scarcity and decimation of both human and animal populations. For these countries, risk, disaster management and insurance strategies will be necessary for the 2009 Copenhagen agreement that will lock in a policy to counteract climate change.
Insuring less developed countries against risk from climate change is a fundamental requirement to meet adaptation objectives. Currently, an insurance mechanism is being formulated to address loss and damage from climate change.
The debates on UN-REDD (the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries) are focusing on establishing a baseline for forest degradation, and how to offer market incentives to avoid deforestation.
There was also discussion on how deforestation and degradation affect indigenous people. The suggestion has been raised to organize special consultations on this issue during next year.
The good news is that countries seem to be trying to find out-of-the-box solutions instead of sticking with their commonly held positions, a plus in negotiations that are often stalled by Parties unwilling to compromise.
