Livine: Risky business

Insuring countries against climate catastrophe

I’ve chosen for an article about the global climate change and its effects on the economy.

The last 50 years there were a lot of victims because of the climate chance and the economy is also one of the victims. There are economical losses around 1 billion dollar.

It’s up to the countries to do something before it’s too late, the countries should build resilience to limit the consequences of this climate chance. Otherwise, there would come bigger economical losses for the following decennia.

According to a report of the ECA, the developing countries are most threatened. Developing countries are after all most depend of the climate. If the temperatures keep on rising, they will become the biggest victim. Rising temperatures lead to a shrinking of the vegetation-output and a scarcity of water. These countries will be less productive because there agriculture depends of the weather, they have almost no diversity of cultivated plants and no insurance products. If the global temperature keeps on increasing this way, these counties will lose around 19% of their GDP until 2030.

This report was in order of Del Rio because their government doesn’t do so much to help them with their insecurity because of this climate chance. This report is also meant to help other interested parties so that they can lead a policy to limit the consequences of this climate chance.

The report doesn’t go about the financing of the measures but they claim that they are effectively searching for cost-efficient methods. These methods will also contribute something to the insurers, financial institutes and potential investors. The reaction on this report were until now very positive.

Representatives of Oxfam and The Red Cross say that they are busy with projects for the agriculture in Ethiopia and with healthcare projects in Kenya.

It’s obvious that there is a economical impulse for the privately-owned companies who are involved with this initiative. This realization can result in recommending and asking for products in risk assessment.

The ECA provides now applicable methods for the whole world but it’s up to the local environments and governments to fulfill their task and to build resistance against these results of the global climate change.

I think this article is very interesting and it’s very important to stand still at this subject. There are a lot of people who don’t know or forget that the rising temperature has something to do with the economy.

I also think that we have it very good here so that we forget sometimes that there are also countries in development and that they need help, especially now. So I believe that it’s very good that there are companies such as Oxfam and The Red Cross who are prepared to help these countries in hard times like these.

You can read the article on: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/09/28/climate.insurance/index.html

Greet!
Livine