Insuring the world’s poor against climate change

Annie Snider, Medill News Service, Written for UPI: With climate legislation stalled in the U.S. Senate and international climate control negotiations facing equally daunting obstacles, there is one thing that the key players largely agree on: Something must be done to help communities facing the worst impacts of climate change.

At the U.N. climate talks last December, the United States pledged $10 billion to a fund that will help the hardest-hit countries adapt to rising seas, shifting water resources and altered disease vectors. Microinsurance -- insurance designed to be affordable for the world's poor -- is one of the tools generating excitement and not just among relief groups and other non-governmental organizations.

…A report by the British insurance market Lloyd's caught the business world's attention last year with estimates that the global microinsurance market is growing at a rate faster than 10 percent a year and could boom to as many as 3 billion policies.

…By initially subsidizing the policies, non-profit groups proved that the products could be both appealing to the poor and financially sustainable. Now for-profit companies are jumping into the market. LeapFrog Investments has raised nearly $140 million from financial giants such as J.P. Morgan, TIAA-CREFF and the Soros Economic Development Fund to invest in local insurance companies.

…With many health and life insurance programs in the black, non-profits are turning their attention to insurance products that can play a more direct role in cushioning the world's poorest from the effects of climate change. In 2007, the Gates Foundation granted microfinance group Opportunity International nearly $25 million to beef up its insurance programs and one of the ways it has spent that money is developing policies that protect against the risk of extreme weather events such as drought, flood and typhoon -- events that stand to become more frequent as the climate changes….

Having this guy on your side would be insurance of a sort. A gate guardian, believed to be at Taiyū-in, Rinnō-ji; in Nikkō, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. Shot by Fg2, who has released it into the public domain