Abstract
Floods account for a majority of disasters, especially in South Asia, where they affect 27 million people annually, causing economic losses of over US$1 billion. Climate change threatens to exacerbate these risks. Risk transfer mechanisms, such as weather index insurance (WII) may help buffer farmers against these hazards. However, WII programs struggle to attract the clients most in need of protection, including marginalized women and men. This risks re-enforcing existing inequalities and missing opportunities to promote pro-poor and gender-sensitive development. Key questions, therefore, include what factors constrain access to WIIs amongst heterogeneous communities, and how these can be addressed. This paper contributes to that end through primary data from two WII case studies (one in India, the other in Bangladesh) that identify contextual socio-economic and structural barriers to accessing WII, and strategies to overcome these. More significantly, this paper synthesizes the case study findings and those from a review of the literature on other WII initiatives into a framework to promote a systematic approach to address these challenges: an important step forward in moving from problem analysis to remedial action. The framework highlights actions across WII product design, implementation and post-implementation, to minimize risks of social exclusion in future WII schemes.
Highlights
South Asian countries are highly prone to natural disasters, and over the past 40 years, floods accounted for approximately half of all disasters, affecting on average of approximately 27 million people annually
The following aspects were explored: (i) gendered characterization of the target communities in terms of farmer classes; exposure to floods and other weather-related risks; prior experience with weather index insurance (WII); and literacy; (ii) how diverse local contextual characteristics have impacted access to WII; (iii) the role of local institutions; and (iv) strategies and tools used to overcome challenges faced by different farmer groups, and their efficacy
The literature was comprised of both peer-reviewed and other reports, sourced through global bibliographic, Google Scholar and Google searches. While these findings contribute to the framework we present, they help validate the case study findings, given that the WII pilots in each case study ran for only two years
Summary
South Asian countries are highly prone to natural disasters, and over the past 40 years, floods accounted for approximately half of all disasters, affecting on average of approximately 27 million people annually. The intensities of flooding and other natural disaster’s impacts in South Asia are linked to the high dependence on smallholder agriculture for livelihoods, where disasters disproportionately affect marginal and smallholder farmers who lack the wherewithal to deal with damage and loss of income-earning opportunities. This includes women, who tend to be among the poorest and the most vulnerable to climate change and weather shocks [3,4]. At stake are the livelihoods of millions of small and marginal farmer households, and national Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)
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