This chapter aims to inform the Loss & Damage debate by analysing the degree to which insurance can be used as a tool to explore and manage adaptation frontiers. It establishes that insurance can be used as a navigational tool around adaptation frontiers in three ways: First, by facilitating the exploration of adaptation frontiers by contributing to a framework for signalling the magnitude, location, and exposure to climate-related risks and providing signals when adaptation limits are approached. Second, by supporting actors in moving away from adaptation limits by improving ex-ante decision making, incentivising risk reduction and creating a space of certainty for climate resilient development. Third, by aiding actors in remaining in the tolerable risk space by facilitating financial buffering as part of contingency approaches. However, we also find that insurance against the risks of climate change in market terms possesses several limitations. We therefore suggest the embedding of insurance in a comprehensive climate risk management approach accompanied by other risk reduction and management strategies as key principle for any international cooperation approach to respond to climate change impacts. Keywords Loss & Damage • Resilience • Climate risk insurance Comprehensive climate risk management 13.1 Introduction The idea of adaptation to climatic stressors has emerged as a mainstream risk management strategy to help maintain human-ecological systems in a "safe operating space" (Röckström et al. 2009). However, emerging literature underpinning
The debate on "Loss and Damage" (L&D) has gained traction over the last few years. Supported by growing scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change amplifying frequency, intensity and duration of climate-related hazards as well as observed increases in climate-related impacts and risks in many regions, the
Loss and damage refers to the negative effects of climate variability and climate change that people have not been able to cope with or adapt to. Loss and damage is already a significant -and in some places growing -consequence of an inadequate ability to adapt to changes in climate patterns across the world. Potential future loss and damage depends on emissions, vulnerability, and exposure variables of the impacted human (or natural) system. Today, loss and damage arising from climate change impacts is mostly a local problem, with changes in extreme weather events and slow-onset impacts. Future loss and damage is potentially of inconceivable magnitudeespecially considering non-economic values and the interconnectivity leading to cascading, transnational effects. Addressing loss and damage is important because it will affect how society manages the negative impacts of climate change while pursuing other goals, such as resilient and low-emission development. The potential impacts of unmitigated anthropogenic climate change have significant implications for the current social organisation. Future loss and damage can be limited through the mitigation and adaptation choices that are made today. Mitigation ambitions will largely influence the degree to which loss and damage is averted, particularly from around 2030 * This article has been prepared in the context of the Loss and Damage in Vulnerable Countries Initiative, which is part of the Climate Development Knowledge Network. Responsibility for the content lies solely with the authors. The text is an output from a project funded by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) for the benefit of developing countries. However, the views expressed and information contained in the text are not necessarily those of or endorsed by DFID or the members of the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, which can accept no responsibility or liability for such views, completeness or accuracy of the information, or for any reliance placed on them.
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