Since our April blog, more field reports and anecdotal evidence have emerged to gain a more holistic picture of the COVID-19 impact on smallholder farmers. The spillover effects of this health crisis are unprecedented, spreading across all sectors with major damages to food systems, transportation, trade and tourism as well as altering businesses and daily lives around the world through control measures. In our work, we also see farmers suffering economic impact from business shutdown, movement constraints and supply chain disruption. For example, inputs/animal feed are not available or become

GIIF: In order to provide an introduction to our readers, could you please share with us the main priority areas of the InsuResilience Global Partnership and the activities under its Working Groups? Dr. Zwick: Launched at the COP23 in November 2017, the InsuResilience Global Partnership has the vision, to strengthen the resilience of developing countries and to protect the lives and livelihoods of poor and vulnerable people from the impacts of disasters by promoting the adoption and use of climate and disaster risk finance and insurance (CDRFI) solutions and approaches towards faster, more

At the time of writing, disruptions on food production, agricultural supply chains and markets have not been materialized; however, the pandemic is directly affecting food systems through impact on food supply and demand, and indirectly through decreases in purchasing power as well as logistical barriers and trade blockages. Learning from past pandemic, for instance during the 2014 Ebola crisis, lockdowns in West Africa had several negative impacts on farmers’ livelihoods including curbing access to markets both for input purchase and produce sale as well as reducing the availability of

With the outbreak yet to be contained, the COVID-19 crisis is steadily amassing damages across various sectors such as health, transportation, trade, tourism, to name a few. While the impact/pressure to agriculture sector is less pronounced, disruption in the value chains has been observed in dynamics of food supply and demand in conjunction of reducing purchasing power, logistical barriers and trade blockages. With the start of typhoon, monsoon and hurricane season in different parts of the world as well as weather uncertainty in the upcoming crop seasons in arid and semi-arid regions

The AAIB, Sri Lanka’s national agricultural insurer, partnered with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to modernize agricultural insurance provision in the country. Kasundari, the Team Lead for the project, joined us to share their experience in digitizing agricultural information as part of this project. Background Imagine having to walk through a paddy tract consisting of hundreds of small fields in a rural area, sometimes without proper roads, seeking to identify a particular paddy of land. The mission is to verify an insurance claim in that field. For insurers offering traditional

Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven, Director General at Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) reflects in an interview with GIIF on Germany’s commitment to fight climate change . At COP25, Germany pledged more than EUR 100million to support climate risk finance and insurance solutions under the InsuResilience Global Partnership, EUR10million of which are to support GIIF in 2020-2022. GIIF: What do you think about the outcome of the most recent COP25 in Madrid? COP25 stayed well behind expectations as it did not deliver concrete results in many crucial areas. Several

On Jan 23, 2020, Steven Collet, Director and Ambassador for Business and Development at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, received an interview with the GIIF team in Washington, DC about his policy priorities, his expectations in GIIF, and the newly launched Dutch Fund for Climate and Development (DFCD). A major donor to GIIF, the Government of the Netherlands, supports the Program in more than 10 countries in Africa and Asia, including special initiatives such as the insuretech-related innovations and the capacity building activities targeted to (re) insurers to establish an

Agricultural insurance can provide vulnerable agriculturalists with certainty in the face of natural disasters such as drought, reducing dependence on harmful coping mechanisms, and ultimately leading to increased financial resilience of the individual and the wider community and economy. This 90-minute tech session provided an overview of how the World Bank and IFC jointly support governments, private sector insurers, and households to manage financially in an increasingly volatile world. Three country cases (Zambia, Nigeria, and Pakistan) were presented and discussed at this tech session. Mr

On November 15, 2019, the Global Index Insurance Facility (GIIF) hosted a full-day seminar, International Experience with Agriculture Insurance: Providing Financial Protection Against Climate Risks, in Washington, DC. In his opening remarks, Mr. Olivier Mahul, Practice Manager of Crisis and Disaster Risk Finance (CDRF), reflected on his 15-year career at the World Bank starting with involvement in Index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) in Mongolia followed by crop insurance scheme in India to offer his insights on how the agriculture insurance has evolved by tacking various challenges. He

The agricultural sector depends highly on nature, making it constantly exposed to exacerbating climate and disaster risks. To mitigate the problem, agriculture insurance and index insurance are regarded as valuable risk-management instruments because they allow farmers to continue to have access to finance and to build resilience against future risks. Having agriculture insurance is especially relevant in regions like Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia where 450 million smallholder farmers feed up to 80 percent of the developing world, according to the World Food Program. While insurance companies