23.06.2021

Diving deep into integrated approaches to promote co-benefits within climate and disaster risk management: new InsuResilience Sectoral Communities

Under the InsuResilience Integrated Approaches Working Group, four Sectoral Communities were recently launched that allow more topic-specific discussions on bundled approaches and solutions in the following sectors:  

  1. Linking Risk Financing to Anticipatory Action 
  2. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and Risk Financing 
  3. Integrated Resilience Approaches in Agriculture 
  4. Risk Financing for Resilient Infrastructure 

These four focus areas are based on interests expressed by the Integrated Approaches Working Group. In regular meetings members of the Sectoral Communities come together for focused and demand driven exchanges. Within these communities, discussions take place on existing solutions, latest evidence and trends, with the aim to further develop or pilot new and innovative risk financing solutions. Going forward, it is also envisaged to increasingly link solutions with the needs in vulnerable countries through specific events. 

Each Sectoral Community operates independently and has set its own objectives and priority activities. For example, the sectoral community on Linking Risk Financing to Anticipatory Action, co-chaired by the REAP Secretariat and the Anticipation Hub, will be holding a workshop this year to discuss how Risk Financing for Anticipatory Action works in detail and how it can be further scaled-up, with the aim of including country representatives.  

The community on Risk Financing for Resilient Infrastructure will organise at least four impulse presentations in 2021 on existing or planned projects or initiatives on resilient infrastructure and risk financing to learn from each other and identify common barriers that members face. The InsuResilience Secretariat is also co-organising a dialogue event on 14th July with the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) – who is a member of the Sectoral Community – on ‘Disaster Risk Finance for Public Infrastructure Assets in the Developing World: Opportunities and Challenges’. 

The Sectoral Community on Integrated Resilience Approaches in Agriculture will focus on collecting best practices on how risk financing mechanisms can be better linked to risk reduction for enhanced resilience-building in the agricultural sector. This community will also be contributing to key messages for the UN Food Systems Summit. 

Finally, the Sectoral Community on Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and Risk Financing will explore how NbS can contribute to risk reduction and how these wider resilience dividends can be accounted for, e.g. in business cases and insurance pricing. Another aspiration of this Sectoral Community is to help mainstream this topic into the global climate change adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction agendas.  

As a joint collaboration space for each Sectoral Community, specific MS Teams channels have been set up by the InsuResilence Secretariat to enable a continuous exchange, also in-between the community meetings. 

Participation in our sectoral communities is very welcome! If you have any questions or would like to join one or several of the Sectoral Communities, please get in contact with the InsuResilience Secretariat at any time: secretariat@insuresilience.org. 

For more information on the Integrated Approaches Working Group, read the article in the InsuResilience Annual Report 2020.