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Author: Leigh Taylor Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
The planet's changing climatology poses epistemological and practical problems for insurance institutions underwriting weather or property risks: models based on meticulously calculated empirical event frequencies will not project risk in a changing climate system. Seeking to explain the unprecedented scale of recent insured losses, media pieces regularly articulate a narrative that links climate change to an immanently insecure future. This logic has prompted some scholars to place climate change in a new category of risks generated by industrial society that are fundamentally incalculable and uninsurable. This dissertation challenges the epistemological assumptions and empirical validity of the "uninsurability hypothesis" using the case study of (re)insurance and catastrophe modeling for North Atlantic tropical cyclones. In so doing, it turns a critical eye on the depoliticized discourse of climate change emergency. The research analyzes the development of insurance institutions and definitions of climate change risk over time, applying the theory that risks are reconstructed phenomenon of multiple contingency which always embody contested classificatory and causal stories. Research included over forty extended interviews with academic, regulatory, and private sector employees; observation at thirteen industry, academic, and regulatory conferences; and qualitative and quantitative analysis of corporate and regulatory documents and datasets. The findings trace new constellations of science, value, and fear that are emerging within the (re)insurance industry as it attempts to assess and manage climate risks and secure new paths to accumulation. Three major themes emerge. First, the dynamics of climate change are being integrated into circuits of insurance and financial capital. The perception of climate risk may buoy the (re)industry's business prospects in the short term by reproducing uncertainty and allowing firms to exclude certain risks from all-perils coverage and repackage them into new products. Climate risks may be incorporated into the central contradictory dynamic of the catastrophe reinsurance market, which requires the continual recurrence of catastrophic losses and devaluation in order to sustain pricing and accumulation in the long term. Meanwhile, investment capital is accessing new risk premiums from the insurance sector through catastrophe bonds, the market for which demonstrates a strategic and selective attempt to capture "returns on place" by finance capital, rather than an "escape" from uninsurable places on the part of (re)insurers. Second, within both the industry and scientific community, the question of how climate change is influencing catastrophic losses or will do so in the future is far from settled, despite its representation as a closed "matter of fact". Furthermore, most (re)insurers do not currently account for climate change in their daily underwriting and pricing, and often cite the possibility of compensating for climate effects through future annual adjustments to prices and policies. This apparent contradiction between discourse and practice is the result of a complex set of institutional, political, and economic factors rather than a systematic attempt to deceive the public or exaggerate risks. Third, privatized economies of science - and particularly probabilistic catastrophe models - are central tools for climate risk management through (re)insurance markets. The expertise of PhD-credentialed scientists is increasingly used in industry contexts to publicize climate change risks, legitimate moves towards five-year forward-looking catastrophe models, and to commodify climate risks into financial exposures and assets. These findings draw our attention the (re)insurance industry's dependence on the perpetual multiplication of fear and value via technocientific risk identification, and suggest the profound limitations of attempts to manage climate risks and anxieties through market mechanisms.
Author: Leigh Taylor Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Get Book Here
Book Description
The planet's changing climatology poses epistemological and practical problems for insurance institutions underwriting weather or property risks: models based on meticulously calculated empirical event frequencies will not project risk in a changing climate system. Seeking to explain the unprecedented scale of recent insured losses, media pieces regularly articulate a narrative that links climate change to an immanently insecure future. This logic has prompted some scholars to place climate change in a new category of risks generated by industrial society that are fundamentally incalculable and uninsurable. This dissertation challenges the epistemological assumptions and empirical validity of the "uninsurability hypothesis" using the case study of (re)insurance and catastrophe modeling for North Atlantic tropical cyclones. In so doing, it turns a critical eye on the depoliticized discourse of climate change emergency. The research analyzes the development of insurance institutions and definitions of climate change risk over time, applying the theory that risks are reconstructed phenomenon of multiple contingency which always embody contested classificatory and causal stories. Research included over forty extended interviews with academic, regulatory, and private sector employees; observation at thirteen industry, academic, and regulatory conferences; and qualitative and quantitative analysis of corporate and regulatory documents and datasets. The findings trace new constellations of science, value, and fear that are emerging within the (re)insurance industry as it attempts to assess and manage climate risks and secure new paths to accumulation. Three major themes emerge. First, the dynamics of climate change are being integrated into circuits of insurance and financial capital. The perception of climate risk may buoy the (re)industry's business prospects in the short term by reproducing uncertainty and allowing firms to exclude certain risks from all-perils coverage and repackage them into new products. Climate risks may be incorporated into the central contradictory dynamic of the catastrophe reinsurance market, which requires the continual recurrence of catastrophic losses and devaluation in order to sustain pricing and accumulation in the long term. Meanwhile, investment capital is accessing new risk premiums from the insurance sector through catastrophe bonds, the market for which demonstrates a strategic and selective attempt to capture "returns on place" by finance capital, rather than an "escape" from uninsurable places on the part of (re)insurers. Second, within both the industry and scientific community, the question of how climate change is influencing catastrophic losses or will do so in the future is far from settled, despite its representation as a closed "matter of fact". Furthermore, most (re)insurers do not currently account for climate change in their daily underwriting and pricing, and often cite the possibility of compensating for climate effects through future annual adjustments to prices and policies. This apparent contradiction between discourse and practice is the result of a complex set of institutional, political, and economic factors rather than a systematic attempt to deceive the public or exaggerate risks. Third, privatized economies of science - and particularly probabilistic catastrophe models - are central tools for climate risk management through (re)insurance markets. The expertise of PhD-credentialed scientists is increasingly used in industry contexts to publicize climate change risks, legitimate moves towards five-year forward-looking catastrophe models, and to commodify climate risks into financial exposures and assets. These findings draw our attention the (re)insurance industry's dependence on the perpetual multiplication of fear and value via technocientific risk identification, and suggest the profound limitations of attempts to manage climate risks and anxieties through market mechanisms.
Author: Niels Viggo Haueter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198754914
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
Reinsurance was a global business from the start the method of spreading and balancing risks in international markets. But this also meant that reinsurance was more heavily exposed to global trends than many other industries. This book gives detailed accounts on how reinsurers dealt with all these challenges.
Author: Franziska Arnold-Dwyer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781032333069
Category : Climate change insurance
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"The insurance industry has found itself at the front line of climate change challenges, providing insurance cover in relation to risks associated with climate change. As risk carriers, insurers pay claims for climate change related losses - such as property damage caused by windstorms, flooding, and wildfires - which have been increasing in frequency and severity. As major institutional investors, insurance companies invest in assets that may be increasingly vulnerable to climate risks. Insurance regulators across the globe have therefore started to require insurance companies to identify, manage and report on climate change risks that could pose a threat to their financial stability. However, managing and reporting on the effect of climate risk on an insurer's balance sheet is an inward-looking perspective that does not stem climate change. It needs to be paired with an outward-looking perspective that takes account of the insurance industry's impact on the environment, and the insurance industry's capacity to influence what policyholders, investee enterprises and other business partners do to address climate change challenges. For the insurance industry, the key components of positive outward impact are "impact underwriting" and "impact investment". This book sets out the current legal and regulatory landscape for impact underwriting and impact investment. Whilst the focus of research and regulatory interventions to date has been on inward impact, in this book it will be argued that, to take positive climate action that supports the Paris Agreement goals and the national and international Net Zero targets, the debate should now move on to considering the positive outward impact the insurance industry can make, and how we can create a legal environment to facilitate this. The book puts forward the case for a new vision of the role of the insurance industry as climate action enablers and makes proposals for insurance products and risk transfer and loss resilience structures that can support policyholders in their transition to a Net Zero economy. The audience for this book will include legal practitioners, insurance industry professionals, financial and insurance regulators, policymakers and interested academics"--
Author: Cornel Quinto
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642224350
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 178
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Book Description
Natural disasters such as large-scale flooding are on the increase. Climate change directly affects our basis of existence. This includes residential buildings, and commercial and industrial properties. The author highlights the requirements that will have to be met by a protection system for buildings in the future. Insurance against natural hazards lies at the heart of such a system. The insurance systems of Germany, France, Spain, Switzerland and the USA are presented. The author explains what type of insurance system is best suited to meet the challenge of climate change. The starting point of the legal section is statutory insurance with a monopoly. The question of whether such insurance is compatible with Swiss and EU law is examined. Keywords in this respect are economic freedom, competition, services of general interest and universal service.
Author: Leonardo Martinez-Diaz
Publisher: U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
ISBN: 057874841X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
This publication serves as a roadmap for exploring and managing climate risk in the U.S. financial system. It is the first major climate publication by a U.S. financial regulator. The central message is that U.S. financial regulators must recognize that climate change poses serious emerging risks to the U.S. financial system, and they should move urgently and decisively to measure, understand, and address these risks. Achieving this goal calls for strengthening regulators’ capabilities, expertise, and data and tools to better monitor, analyze, and quantify climate risks. It calls for working closely with the private sector to ensure that financial institutions and market participants do the same. And it calls for policy and regulatory choices that are flexible, open-ended, and adaptable to new information about climate change and its risks, based on close and iterative dialogue with the private sector. At the same time, the financial community should not simply be reactive—it should provide solutions. Regulators should recognize that the financial system can itself be a catalyst for investments that accelerate economic resilience and the transition to a net-zero emissions economy. Financial innovations, in the form of new financial products, services, and technologies, can help the U.S. economy better manage climate risk and help channel more capital into technologies essential for the transition. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5247742
Author: Baruch Berliner
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 136
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Book Description
Author: Reinhard Mechler
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319720260
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 563
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Book Description
This book provides an authoritative insight on the Loss and Damage discourse by highlighting state-of-the-art research and policy linked to this discourse and articulating its multiple concepts, principles and methods. Written by leading researchers and practitioners, it identifies practical and evidence-based policy options to inform the discourse and climate negotiations. With climate-related risks on the rise and impacts being felt around the globe has come the recognition that climate mitigation and adaptation may not be enough to manage the effects from anthropogenic climate change. This recognition led to the creation of the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage in 2013, a climate policy mechanism dedicated to dealing with climate-related effects in highly vulnerable countries that face severe constraints and limits to adaptation. Endorsed in 2015 by the Paris Agreement and effectively considered a third pillar of international climate policy, debate and research on Loss and Damage continues to gain enormous traction. Yet, concepts, methods and tools as well as directions for policy and implementation have remained contested and vague. Suitable for researchers, policy-advisors, practitioners and the interested public, the book furthermore: • discusses the political, legal, economic and institutional dimensions of the issue• highlights normative questions central to the discourse • provides a focus on climate risks and climate risk management. • presents salient case studies from around the world.
Author: David Tyfield
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317412036
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 487
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Book Description
The political economy of research and innovation (R&I) is one of the central issues of the early twenty-first century. ‘Science’ and ‘innovation’ are increasingly tasked with driving and reshaping a troubled global economy while also tackling multiple, overlapping global challenges, such as climate change or food security, global pandemics or energy security. But responding to these demands is made more complicated because R&I themselves are changing. Today, new global patterns of R&I are transforming the very structures, institutions and processes of science and innovation, and with it their claims about desirable futures. Our understanding of R&I needs to change accordingly. Responding to this new urgency and uncertainty, this handbook presents a pioneering selection of the growing body of literature that has emerged in recent years at the intersection of science and technology studies and political economy. The central task for this research has been to expose important but consequential misconceptions about the political economy of R&I and to build more insightful approaches. This volume therefore explores the complex interrelations between R&I (both in general and in specific fields) and political economies across a number of key dimensions from health to environment, and universities to the military. The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Science offers a unique collection of texts across a range of issues in this burgeoning and important field from a global selection of top scholars. The handbook is essential reading for students interested in the political economy of science, technology and innovation. It also presents succinct and insightful summaries of the state of the art for more advanced scholars.
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309083435
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 213
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Book Description
Many Americans believe that people who lack health insurance somehow get the care they really need. Care Without Coverage examines the real consequences for adults who lack health insurance. The study presents findings in the areas of prevention and screening, cancer, chronic illness, hospital-based care, and general health status. The committee looked at the consequences of being uninsured for people suffering from cancer, diabetes, HIV infection and AIDS, heart and kidney disease, mental illness, traumatic injuries, and heart attacks. It focused on the roughly 30 million-one in seven-working-age Americans without health insurance. This group does not include the population over 65 that is covered by Medicare or the nearly 10 million children who are uninsured in this country. The main findings of the report are that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to receive too little medical care and receive it too late; be sicker and die sooner; and receive poorer care when they are in the hospital, even for acute situations like a motor vehicle crash.
Author: Rebecca Elliott
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231548818
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192
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Book Description
Communities around the United States face the threat of being underwater. This is not only a matter of rising waters reaching the doorstep. It is also the threat of being financially underwater, owning assets worth less than the money borrowed to obtain them. Many areas around the country may become economically uninhabitable before they become physically unlivable. In Underwater, Rebecca Elliott explores how families, communities, and governments confront problems of loss as the climate changes. She offers the first in-depth account of the politics and social effects of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which provides flood insurance protection for virtually all homes and small businesses that require it. In doing so, the NFIP turns the risk of flooding into an immediate economic reality, shaping who lives on the waterfront, on what terms, and at what cost. Drawing on archival, interview, ethnographic, and other documentary data, Elliott follows controversies over the NFIP from its establishment in the 1960s to the present, from local backlash over flood maps to Congressional debates over insurance reform. Though flood insurance is often portrayed as a rational solution for managing risk, it has ignited recurring fights over what is fair and valuable, what needs protecting and what should be let go, who deserves assistance and on what terms, and whose expectations of future losses are used to govern the present. An incisive and comprehensive consideration of the fundamental dilemmas of moral economy underlying insurance, Underwater sheds new light on how Americans cope with loss as the water rises.
