This is a private, two-day workshop exploring the challenging issue of expanding the role of insurance and other financial and institutional mechanisms to provide innovative financing and resilience in addressing climate related loss and damage.
The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement specifically provides for the continuation of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage (WIM) to centralize discussion of the means and mechanisms to assist in alleviating such impacts and provide resilience to affected communities and countries. Under loss and damage provisions in the Paris Agreement, “risk insurance facilities, climate risk pooling and other insurance solutions” are identified as one of the “areas of cooperation and facilitation to enhance understanding, action and support.” Later this year the UNFCCC Standing Committee on Finance (SCF) will dedicate its 2016 Forum to this topic.
Key workshop objectives include:
- discussing the current role and limitations of insurance and existing international funds in relation to catastrophic as well as slow on-set climate related loss and damage;
- exploring creatively and developing concepts for innovative use of insurance, other financial instruments as well as new forms of institutional mechanisms in alleviating climate change impacts and providing resilience to communities; and
- developing and subsequently sharing the resulting ideas in an outcome report with the SCF and WIM as well as with private and public institutions, companies and States that wish to be proactive on these issues.
The workshop is co-sponsored by the following non-partisan and not-for-profit think tanks/research centers: the Wilson Center, the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) International Law Research Program, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) and the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD).
There will also be a public event on this topic, hosted by the Wilson Center, in conjunction with the UN Foundation and George Mason University, for a two-hour discussion in a hands-on interactive format with a broader Washington D.C. audience. This will be followed by a small reception co-sponsored by CIGI that will allow for additional networking and further individual discussions and engagement. It is hoped that the report from the workshop and a summary of the public discussion will provide the basis for follow up and collaborations post workshop.
