News South Africa

Despite hype, insurance not key to resilience for farmers

JOHANNESBURG: In most developing countries, farmers risk losing their crops and livestock to droughts or floods, and the recent intensity of these climatic shocks has been record-setting. As the losses from these events mount, the developing world has been turning to the experiences of the richer nations in transferring risk through mechanisms like insurance.
A Kenyan pastoralist with his dead cow during the 2011 drought. (Photo: )
A Kenyan pastoralist with his dead cow during the 2011 drought. (Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN)

But experts - including the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX) - have sounded a word of caution in portraying insurance as a panacea for improving resilience to climatic shocks.

Even in the developed world, insurers are reluctant to provide regional or even nationwide coverage for floods and other natural hazards because of the systemic nature of those risks, the SREX pointed out.

Read the full article on www.irinnews.org.

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