Background
Extreme natural events caused by climate change and disaster risks pose a serious threat to inclusive, sustainable socio-economic development in Asia and the Pacific, requiring urgent action to reduce disaster risk and to enhance residual risk management. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is working on a range of initiatives to strengthen climate and disaster resilience, improve the availability of timely financing for post-disaster response, and reduce the protection gap in its developing member countries (DMCs), covering both sovereign and non-sovereign disaster risk financing solutions.
Despite the availability of climate and disaster risk financing solutions, their uptake remains very low in many DMCs. The challenge of legal and regulatory gaps, insurance and capital market limitations, and data constraints are significant. In response, ADB is convening a regional Climate and Disaster Risk Insurance Forum on 19-20 September 2024 at ADB Headquarters in Manila. The Forum shall address these challenges and focus on reducing the protection gap and enhancing the financial resilience of government, small businesses, and the agriculture and energy sectors in the face of disasters arising from natural hazards and climate change risks.
The Forum intends to bring together a cross-sectoral group of insurance experts, policymakers, and regulators to discuss the role of insurance and capital markets in designing and implementing of innovative solutions.
Objective
The Forum intends to bring together a cross-sectoral group of insurance experts, policymakers, and regulators to discuss the role of insurance and capital markets in designing and implementing of innovative solutions.
The event will focus the discussion on (i) the available sovereign-level disaster risk financing options, (ii) developing catastrophe bonds and national and regional risk pools as alternative risk financing options, (iii) innovative disaster risk transfer products, (iv) engagement of community based organizations to help the vulnerable in the societies during natural catastrophes, (v) managing the weather risk for crop and agriculture value chains, and (vi) benefits of using energy efficiency and saving insurance coupled with performance and credit guarantees to incentivize green investments..