Suarez Contributes to Report on Insurance and Climate Risks

Pablo Suarez, a visiting Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Pardee Center, is a contributing author of a new report titled “Index insurance and climate risk: Prospects for development and disaster management”.  Published through a partnership that includes the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UN World Food Program, Oxfam America and reinsurance giant Swiss Re, the report explores the potential of index-based insurance instruments, in which risk transfer schemes are not based on estimations of actual losses but on measurable indicators of events that cause loss (such as insufficient rainfall for agriculture). This innovative approach can significantly lower transaction costs, potentially making insurance available to people who currently cannot afford financial services.

Suarez has contributed to this field through research and design of pilot projects aimed at subsistence farmers in Malawi and Ethiopia. These pilot projects are used extensively as case studies in the report. The Pardee Center hosted a seminar on microfinance for food and development last February that addressed both insurance pilots.

As a consultant for the UNDP Environment and Energy Group, Suarez is leading a process to explore the feasibility of establishing a Climate Risk Finance Facility for Development.