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The challenges of extending climate risk insurance to fisheries

Nature Climate Change volume 9, pages 896–897 (2019)Cite this article

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To the Editor — As the frequency and intensity of storms alter in a changing climate1,2, fisheries food production systems must adapt to protect global food security and livelihoods. July 2019 saw the launch of the world’s first fisheries index insurance scheme to protect against extreme weather events. Highly innovative climate risk insurance of this type offers the promise of increasing the resilience of billions of people around the world to climate-driven changes in storminess3.

Although index insurance schemes have become widespread in terrestrial agriculture for protection against extreme weather events4, the Caribbean Oceans and Aquaculture Sustainability Facility (COAST) is the first for fisheries. Initially launched in St Lucia and Grenada, COAST is funded by the US State Department and relies on the specialist capabilities of the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF SPC) and the World Bank5. COAST operates at the national as opposed to the individual ‘micro-insurance’ level. Pre-defined benefits are calculated to reflect the likely national financial loss from damage to fishing vessels, gear and infrastructure caused by a hurricane. The specific trigger indices used in COAST are wave height, rainfall, wind and storm surge. Payments will reach the national finance ministries within 14 days of an index-triggering event and will be rapidly channelled to a list of pre-determined fisheries actors including individual fishers, vessel owners, fish vendors and fish processors5.

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Acknowledgements

N.C.S. acknowledges the financial support of the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC; GW4+ studentships NE/L002434/1), the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) and Willis Research Network. Three Cefas employees (S.C.M., J.K.P. and B.L.T.) are authors of this work. S.C.M., J.K.P. and B.L.T. acknowledge financial support from the Commonwealth Marine Economies Programme of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (C7049). We thank the World Bank for comments on the draft manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environment and Sustainability Institute, University of Exeter, Penryn, UK

    Nigel C. Sainsbury & Rachel A. Turner

  2. Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Lowestoft, UK

    Bryony L. Townhill & John K. Pinnegar

  3. Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, Plymouth, UK

    Stephen C. Mangi

  4. School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    John K. Pinnegar

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  1. Nigel C. Sainsbury
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  2. Rachel A. Turner
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  3. Bryony L. Townhill
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  4. Stephen C. Mangi
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Correspondence to Nigel C. Sainsbury.

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Competing interests

S.C.M., J.K.P. and B.L.T. were funded by the World Bank (Consultancy Services contract 7184810) to develop the fisheries assessment methodology that contributed to the COAST parametric insurance scheme.

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Sainsbury, N.C., Turner, R.A., Townhill, B.L. et al. The challenges of extending climate risk insurance to fisheries. Nat. Clim. Chang. 9, 896–897 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0645-z

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