Paving the Way for the Global Shield against Climate Risks

To start off the day, the Co-Chairs of the InsuResilience invite the audience on-site and online to reflect on their road travelled so far and the way that lies ahead for the Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance community. Moderator Minu Hemmati will introduce the agenda and the upcoming sessions.

More information will follow soon.

This session brings together experts and practitioners in the field of Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance to explore the Global Shield’s potential for more coherent, systematic and sustained financial protection in vulnerable countries. Various efforts have been launched and are still ongoing across various institutions under the InsuResilience Global Partnership to scale up prearranged financing and enable fast and reliable financial assistance of climate-affected communities. This session brings together key figures across this institutional landscape to collect first-hand practical experiences on opportunities and challenges in scaling up financial protection.

The session will take a closer look at how the Global Shield’s in-country process and systematic coordination of financial and technical support can help unlock these opportunities and address key barriers. It will respond to the needs raised in the pre-ceding keynote speech, and provide valuable ideas for the further evolution of the Global Shield. 

Speakers:

Anne Kamau – Director, AB Consultants
Aholotu Palu – CEO, Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Company
Jan Kellet – Corporate & Team Leader, UNDP Insurance & Risk Finance Facility
Theodore Talbot – Chief Economist & Associate Director, Centre for Disaster Protection

Moderator: Minu Hemmati

Countries with fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS) are often particularly vulnerable when it comes to climate shocks, as in most cases, their situation further reduces coping capacities. Pre-arranged finance can provide useful solutions to access financing for faster and reliable disaster response and emergency relief for affected communities, lowering the overall cost of disasters. However, specific challenges and operational constraints might apply in these countries, such as the “money-out” systems that are needed to channel the financing to the affected communities and the affordability of solutions. Studies found that the more fragile a country is, the less climate finance it received, supporting the idea that climate finance is risk adverse and often not reaching the most vulnerable. This means highly vulnerable populations are often being left behind. 

Financial protection in FCS is possible and can contribute to the overall resilience of the country. Therefore, in this session, we want to explore how the identified challenges and constraints can be addressed, based on learnings of the humanitarian community. We will look at existing examples and learn from experiences on the ground.

Speakers: 

Barbara Rosen Jacobson – Advocacy Advisory, Advocacy Advisory, Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance at Mercy Corps
Esther Muiruri – German Red Cross Delegate for South Sudan
Juliane Schillinger – Technical Adviser Climate & Conflict, Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre
Nicholas Bodanac – Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Moderator: Kara Devonna Siahaan – Head, Anticipation Hub

At COP27, a groundbreaking decision to establish new funding arrangements and a fund for responding to loss and damage was taken. The Global Shield against Climate Risks was welcomed as initiative in the preamble of the decision. Until COP28, a Transitional Committee will develop recommendations for the operationalization of the new funding arrangements und the fund. For this, priority gaps within the current landscape need to be identified and addressed.

In this context, the Global Shield can with its financing structure mobilise and pool respective donor and other funds and enable a more systematic global approach to closing protection gaps. With the development and scale-up of pre-arranged instruments for rapid financial relief, it will help to cost-efficiently and effectively respond to loss and damage exacerbated by climate change. Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance (CDRFI) solutions are interlinked with early warning systems and adaptive social protection to develop tailored country packages adapted to the pre-identified gaps.

Speakers: tbc

In 2021, The Evidence Roadmap was published with the objective to strengthen the evidence base for Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance impacts. This session looks into the latest evidence for macroeconomic effects of CDRFI and how it can inform the set-up of the Global Shield and V20 Climate Prosperity Plans. 

The session includes a keynote presentation from academic representatives on a recent publication and is followed by a discussion among panelists and participants. Closing words on next steps for the Evidence Roadmap will be delivered by Sönke Kreft, Executive Director of the Munich Climate Insurance Initiative and Co-Chair of the InsuResilience Impact Working Group (tbc).

This session will explore the role of the private sector in the Global Shield against Climate Risks and discuss how different private actors can evolve in contributing to the processes and solutions under the Global Shield. The first part of the session will take a closer look at methods of risk modelling and how this can help to quantify gaps for solutions. The participants will take part in an interactive learning of risk modelling where different scenarios in different regions are played out.   

​The second part will go into a discussion of existing gaps and how inclusive insurance schemes could look under the Global Shield. For this, the session will showcase an example from Kenya. Key to the outcomes of the session will be the discussion of the speakers together with the audience about the role of the private sector for the design of inclusive insurance schemes, the market setting, and guiding principles for processes from data collection and risk modelling, to implementation and collaboration with partners in other sectors.

This session is an opportunity to share with the InsuResilience community the Accra-Marrakech Agenda to revolutionise risk management for our climate insecure world including to double down efforts to put in place anticipatory finance (pre-arranged and trigger-based funds) for loss and damage and mainstream surveillance and monitoring of climate risks of all kinds (physical, transition, spillover) in International Financial Institution (IFI) finance and credit rating practices, including through the landmark G7-V20 Global Shield against Climate Risks. The Global Shield is the financial protection element of V20-led Climate Prosperity Plans.

Participants will get a chance to have a look at posters presented by selected members on their work and network during the coffee break.

The session brings together representatives of the three Global Shield Financing Vehicles with the purpose of providing better understanding on how the vehicles work and complement each other to achieve more coherent, systematic and sustained financial protection in vulnerable countries. This will be done through short presentations by each vehicle of the mandates, approaches and instruments of types of support they offer, as well as exploring the decision process of how country requests are channelled to the different financing vehicles and how solutions packages would be designed in response. The presentations will be followed by an open Q/A session, during which members of the audience (in person and virtual) will have an opportunity to engage with the speakers to ask questions and / or clarify remaining doubts.

Speakers: 

Annette Detken – Head of the Global Shield Solutions Platform
Karsten Löffler – Co-Head of the Global Shield Solutions Platform
Simon Hagemann  – Financial Sector Specialist, World Bank, Global Shield Financing Facility
Alexander Ebhart – UNOPS, CVF & V20 Joint Multi-Donor Fund

Moderator: Daniel Stadtmüller – Team Lead, InsuResilience Secretariat

More information will follow shortly.