Presenting the Partners for Resilience Alliance
The Partners for Resilience Alliance is a Netherlands based initiative of the Netherlands Red Cross, Cordaid (Caritas Netherlands) CARE NL, Wetlands International and the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre, all partners in the Millennium Agreement “Controlling Climate Risks”.

Conference on Agriculture, food security and Climate Change
The Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality will organize a conference on agriculture, foodsecurity and climate together with international institutions like the FAO and Worldbank and other countries like Norway, Ethiopia and New Zealand. This was announced by Minister Verburg, ahead of the CSD-18 meeting in New York.

The conference will take place in The Hague in November, before the climate negotiations in Mexico and expects to bring together around 600 international experts on the issue. Read more about the conference here (in Dutch) 

Climate Negotiations in Bonn
Last monday, May 31st, the climate negotiations under the UNFCCC resumed. It's the second time they meet in Bonn since the COP in Copenhagen at the end of last year. One of the issues on the agenda is the review of the Adaptation Fund. For a detailed coverage of the event please see the website of the IISD.

• Millennium Agreement "Controlling Climate Risks" partnermeeting.
  10-06-2010, 15:00 hours @ Klimaatbureau, Utrecht
   
• Climate Adaptation Futures
  29-06-2010 t/m 01-07-2010, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
  More information can be found here.
   
• The International Conference ‘Deltas in Times of Climate Change’
  September 29 – October 1, 2010, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
  www.climatedeltaconference.org.
     
• The 4th Conference on Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries
  Thursday November 25th 2010, The Hague, The Netherlands.
  More info will follow on www.hier.nu/adaptatie

Partners of the Millennium Agreement  "Controlling Climate Risks"

The Netherlands Red Cross, Simavi, Cordaid, BothEnds, AMREF Flying Doctors, Avalon Foundation, Wetlands International, WWF the Netherlands, University for Peace, CARE The Netherlands, ICCO, Save the Children, SNV, Oxfam Novib, ITC, WUR, KNMI, ETC, IVM VU Amsterdam, TSD UT Twente, Eureko, Cardano, FMO, NWP, Commision MER, CPWC, Climate Partners, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Contact details

For questions and remarks concerning this newsletter or the Millennium Agreement, please contact the secretariat.

Millennium Agreement “Controlling Climate Risks” secretariat

Gijs Termeer
Klimaatbureau HIER
Hamburgerstraat 28A
3512 NS Utrecht
The Netherlands
+31-30-234 8267

Eureko / Achmea

Eureko / Achmea and partners develop micro-insurance solutions for climate-related risks together.

A large number of people in developing countries live in rural areas with an extremely low income due to the combined effects of insufficient technical capacity and underperformance of agriculture and the lack of appropriate mechanisms and modern management of risks as well as uncertainties arising from the variability of their immediate surroundings.

Despite the fact that their traditional mechanisms for risk and vulnerability reduction are increasingly inadequate, these are of particular significance when combined with a (mutual) insurance. Especially since these are based on local knowledge and social cohesion, which can be very important in case of unforeseen events or catastrophic risks. This way of combining risk reduction mechanisms (both traditional and modern) with the (mutual) insurance coverage leads to increase (or at worst maintain) the expected revenue. While at the same time the risk exposure is reduced. Systemic risks such as drought or floods will be a calamity for all households in a given region at the same time.

Traditional social networks (neighbours / family) and local self-help groups can not handle such huge risks. The effects of climate change are most noticeable in the subtropical regions. The dry periods last longer, the monsoon rains last less, but more intense.

Eureko / Achmea is experimenting with micro-insurance for crops and livestock. In order to solve the systemic issues pertaining to risks, moral hazard and anti-selection, Eureko / Achmea tests, in addition to indemnity based insurance, also a coverage based on an index. An index will be based on rainfall or water level in a reservoir. It's very complicated to determine the correct index and measure this on a local level. Eureko / Achmea cooperates with DHAN Foundation People Mutuals in the south of India, in the north of Senegal with Pinord and Mec Delta, in Indonesia with ICBRR / CC: Integrated Community Based Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation Programme in Jakarta, an initiative of the Dutch Red Cross and the Rabobank Foundation.

The local farmers are encouraged to work on prevention by means of the micro-insurance programs, for instance to diversify the crops, apply irrigation and the like. The insurance provides them the certainty that production costs are reimbursed in case of an emergency. Due to the lack of the premium payment capacity of the farmers it is not possible to ensure the full income loss at present.

Eureko Re, Achmea Agro and Centraal Beheer Achmea staff is available to support the people with the necessary knowledge. Eureko Re also provides reinsurance capacity. The projects are managed by the Eureko Micro Insurance Service Centre.
By means of these activities Eureko / Achmea realizes its commitments to the Schokland Agreement to achieve the Millennium Development Goal: Controlling Climate Risks.

For more information please visit the Eureko website

EARS

FESA: Drought insurance for African farmers

Drought is one of the most important causes of poverty. Because of drought farmers may be forced to sell their productive assets. Insurance is a good means to share drought risk with others and to prevent farmers from falling into the poverty trap. Insurance is also considered a good alternative to emergency food aid. Moreover is could be a suitable mechanism for climate change adaptation. To develop a drought insurance, however, long time series of measured data are required. But in Africa there are relatively few weather stations producing reliable and continuous data. In many cases the available time series are also not long enough to allow for a proper assessment of the actual risk.

The Millenniumproject no. 00038 FESA Micro-Insurance aims to develop a drought micro-insurance system that can reach every farmer in Africa. To this end use is made of the geostationary meteorological satellite Meteosat, which produces hourly satellite data for the whole continent since the early 1980’s. EARS in Delft, the Netherlands, has been working with these data from the very beginning and has developed technology to produce daily precipitation and evapotranspiration data fields covering the entire continent at 3km resolution. Based on these data crop growth models are run and yield forecasts produced. More than 25 years of satellite data have been collected and processed to a database suitable for micro-insurance. Currently the insurance design process is proceeding and in the near future the data will be used for carrying out pilot projects in Africa in cooperation with interested parties in the micro-insurance field, such as MicroEnsure, Planet Guarantee and Syngenta Foundation.

As a risk sharing tool, micro-insurance is also an important bridge to micro-credit. Little investments in agricultural inputs may create considerably higher production and income. But banks have always been reluctant to provide the necessary loans, because of the risk involved. This will change if the loan is coupled to insurance. Because of this important spin-off also RABO-Development is participating in the FESA project. RABO, from origin a cooperative farmers bank, is worldwide active in this field and has an interest to open up this market with its African partner banks.

More information: ears@ears.nl and www.ears.nl  

Twente Centre for Studies in Technology and Sustainable Development

Catching them before they fall! Vulnerability reduction through insurance

Poor people in developing countries are by their very nature vulnerable to changes and risks. This inability to deal with change and its inherent risks reduces their capacity to accumulate, innovate and develop. The poor people’s risk reduction mechanisms have been challenged by factors like globalization, increased mobility and health shocks. In combination with increasing risks of natural calamities, caused by climate change, especially poor people in developing countries are becoming more vulnerable.

Insurances targeted at low income households can extend and partly replace these risk reduction mechanisms and can increase food security. However, insuring natural calamities, especially in developing countries, remains a complicated ordeal. Despite the fact that many programs are being proposed and piloted, many of them remain too small to reach out to the millions of poor.

Reasons for this are, among others, high costs, lack of supportive legal and regulatory frameworks, difficulties with modeling risks, a need for innovative distribution channels and lack of understanding of the living circumstances of the poor. Many of these problems are related to the fact that the extent of climate change is unpredictable and insurance business processes, which are known in the North, do not fit the developing country context.

The Twente Centre for Studies in Technology and Sustainable Development (CSTM) of the University of Twente contributes to overcoming these problems by researching the reasons why poor people in developing countries take up climate change related insurance. Questions that are addressed are for example:
- How and why do risks and the poor’s risk reduction mechanisms influence the choice of poor people to take up climate change related insurance?
- How and why do the poor’s livelihoods influence the choice to take up climate change related insurance?
- How does climate change related insurance impact the poor’s vulnerability?

Studies are being done in both the Philippines and India. The study in the Philippines researches natural calamity insurance and is performed in collaboration with the Filipino organization ‘Center for Agriculture and Rural Development’ (CARD) and Dutch NGO Cordaid. The study in India focuses on crop insurance and is done in collaboration with Dutch insurer Eureko and the Indian NGO Dhan foundation.

Contact: Karlijn Morsink k.morsink@utwente.nl  
Twente Centre for Studies in Technology and Sustainable Development
http://www.utwente.nl/cstm/