Over 100 of the world’s leading insurance companies joined forces yesterday to urge world leaders to draw on the industry’s expertise to shape climate adaptation policies for developing countries being worked on as part of the UN’s climate change negotiations. The Prince of Wales’s ClimateWise insurance industry group, the Geneva Association think tank, UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and Munich Climate Insurance Initiative, which together represent the world’s leading insurance and risk management firms, co-ordinated the joint statement calling on governments to better support proven insurance mechanisms for tackling climate change risks.
The four-page statement, which was released on the eve of the British government’s Capital Markets Climate Initiative conference in London, argues that public-private initiatives would allow insurers to extend climate-related policies to developing economies that would help them to manage the risks posed by extreme weather events. Specifically it calls on governments to formally acknowledge the role of the insurance industry in the on-going UN climate change negotiations and deliver funding and regulatory frameworks that enable the wider rollout of climate-related insurance products.
