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Saturday, March 15, 2025

UWI collaborates to advance climate risk research

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NEWS DESK
1915 days ago
20191216
UWI Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, says the university is duty-bound and privileged to be a partner in the initiative...

UWI Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, says the university is duty-bound and privileged to be a partner in the initiative...

GUARDIAN

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) is now part of an in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion to fa­cil­i­tate in­ter-re­gion­al South-South cli­mate risk learn­ing and re­search.

In a state­ment is­sued to­day, the Uni­ver­si­ty ex­plains that as part of its re­sponse to the glob­al cli­mate emer­gency, it has joined forces with the Unit­ed Na­tions Uni­ver­si­ty In­sti­tute for En­vi­ron­ment and Hu­man Se­cu­ri­ty (UNU-EHS), the Mu­nich Cli­mate In­sur­ance Ini­tia­tive (MCII), the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South Pa­cif­ic (USP), and the Unit­ed Na­tions Pa­cif­ic Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion Pro­gramme (PFIP) have es­tab­lished the Cli­mate Risk In­sur­ance Re­search Col­lab­o­ra­tion (CRIRC).

The UWI ob­serves that the year 2019 proved chal­leng­ing for many com­mu­ni­ties around the world who are liv­ing at the front­lines of cli­mate change. Low-ly­ing is­land states es­pe­cial­ly were hit by a num­ber of weath­er events, in­clud­ing hur­ri­canes, trop­i­cal storms, tsunamis, ex­cess rain­fall, drought, storm surge and wave im­pacts mak­ing it clear that the need for adap­ta­tion so­lu­tions is press­ing.

Soenke Kreft, MCII Di­rec­tor, says in ad­di­tion to cut­ting emis­sions, it is crit­i­cal that sup­port be giv­en to the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple, pro­vid­ing them with op­tions to pro­tect them­selves against the im­pacts of more fre­quent and more in­tense weath­er events.

“Cli­mate risk in­sur­ance can be such a mea­sure if it is ap­plied with­in a mix of oth­er dis­as­ter risk re­duc­tion strate­gies,” Di­rec­tor Kreft notes. “While the field of cli­mate risk in­sur­ance has made great ad­vance­ments in the last decade, it is still con­sid­ered as an in­no­va­tion in the field of cli­mate change, and as such, it can ben­e­fit great­ly from more sys­tem­at­ic ap­proach­es, en­hanced knowl­edge shar­ing and net­work­ing be­tween re­gions and among dif­fer­ent ac­tors.”

With CRIRC, the part­ners have es­tab­lished a frame­work for co­or­di­na­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion on re­search, de­vel­op­ment and pub­li­ca­tion of aca­d­e­m­ic re­search and pol­i­cy pa­pers on dis­as­ter risk fi­nance, in­sur­ance and so­cial pay­ment.

One of the first re­search pri­or­i­ties for CRIRC is the in­for­mal econ­o­my in is­land states in the Pa­cif­ic, which con­sists of in­for­mal en­tre­pre­neurs, who are vi­brant and vis­i­ble play­ers cre­at­ing a liveli­hood for them­selves and their fam­i­lies. Work­ing as fresh pro­duce sell­ers, hand­i­craft cre­ators, bee­keep­ers and fish and crab sell­ers, they op­er­ate out­side the realm of for­mal le­gal pro­tec­tion and with­out easy ac­cess to for­mal fi­nan­cial and busi­ness sup­port sys­tems. They work as sin­gle-per­son op­er­a­tions or as mi­cro or fam­i­ly en­ter­pris­es, and women are pre­dom­i­nant in these types of in­come-gen­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

The ex­tent and im­pact of dam­age caused by weath­er events, such as cy­clones, means that many gov­ern­ments of Small Is­land States face crit­i­cal chal­lenges in en­sur­ing their fi­nan­cial re­silience to cli­mate change and nat­ur­al haz­ards. They of­ten on­ly have re­strict­ed op­tions to se­cure funds for re­cov­ery and re­con­struc­tion with­out com­pro­mis­ing their long-term fis­cal bal­ance.

The re­search part­ners there­fore aim to work to­geth­er to ex­plore the so­cio-eco­nom­ic and reg­u­la­to­ry needs and de­mands for dis­as­ter risk fi­nance in small is­lands coun­tries, to de­vel­op and as­sess in­no­v­a­tive risk fi­nanc­ing mech­a­nisms, and to iden­ti­fy how dis­as­ter risk fi­nanc­ing tools can be in­te­grat­ed in­to coun­tries’ risk man­age­ment and dis­as­ter re­sponse tool­box­es.

UWI Vice-Chan­cel­lor Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, says the uni­ver­si­ty is du­ty-bound and priv­i­leged to be a part­ner in the ini­tia­tive.

“As an ac­tivist uni­ver­si­ty with re­gard to Cli­mate Re­silience, and one sit­u­at­ed with­in a re­gion where cli­mate change is an ex­is­ten­tial threat,” he says, “we re­gard it our du­ty to con­tribute our ex­per­tise in cli­mate change adap­ta­tion, dis­as­ter risk re­duc­tion, and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment; and to strength­en our ties with aca­d­e­mics, na­tion­al and lo­cal au­thor­i­ties of the Pa­cif­ic Is­land Coun­tries, who are fac­ing many of the cli­mate change-re­lat­ed chal­lenges that we do.”

UWI's fo­cal point for CRIRC, Dr. Dono­van Camp­bell, notes that the re­cent loss­es and dam­ages as­so­ci­at­ed with dis­as­ters across the Caribbean has brought cli­mate risk in­sur­ance in­to sharp fo­cus. In the ab­sence of easy ac­cess to debt and af­ford­able, re­li­able in­sur­ance so­lu­tions, a large por­tion of the eco­nom­ic loss­es stem­ming from cli­mate change events are cur­rent­ly be­ing borne by gov­ern­ments, com­mu­ni­ties and house­holds sup­port­ed by de­vel­op­ment part­ners. Im­pact is felt for many years, re­sult­ing in an emerg­ing pop­u­la­tion in cli­mate pover­ty. CRIRC aims to iden­ti­fy ways to pre­vent this cli­mate pover­ty in Small Is­lands Coun­tries through im­proved cli­mate in­sur­ance re­search co­op­er­a­tion and co­or­di­na­tion.

The Unit­ed Na­tions Cap­i­tal De­vel­op­ment Fund-man­aged Pa­cif­ic Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion Pro­gramme has been at the fore­front of pi­o­neer­ing mar­ket based mi­cro-in­sur­ance so­lu­tions for the mass mar­ket in the Pa­cif­ic, through its work on fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion in the re­gion for over a decade.

“We are ex­cit­ed to be ac­tive­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with MCII and the three aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions, USP, UWI and UNU through this co­op­er­a­tion that aims to fos­ter an ac­tive re­search and learn­ing agen­da in the new Pa­cif­ic In­sur­ance and Cli­mate Adap­ta­tion Pro­gramme be­ing de­vel­oped,” said Kr­ish­nan Narasimhan, UNCDF PFIP Deputy Pro­gramme Man­ag­er.

The ex­per­tise and fa­mil­iar­i­ty of PFIP in the Pa­cif­ic and its abil­i­ty to bring to­geth­er pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor for ecosys­tem and mar­ket sys­tems de­vel­op­ment will add val­ue to the co­op­er­a­tion.


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