In a Business Mirror (Philippines) Op-ed, Dennis B. Funa, the Philippines's insurance commissioner, wrote that the Binhi Micro-Crop Insurance Program of CARD Pioneer Microinsurance Inc. will benefit smallholder farmers face typhoon risks. When leading portfolios of micro-finance institutions are protected by insurance, farmers are also protected. The Binhi Micro-Crop Insurance is supported by the Global Index Insurance Facility and the Government of Canada.

In India's the Hindu, Sucharita Mukherjee, CEO of IFMR Holdings, wrote that risk management through a range of financial products can minimize losses to livelihood. "Catastrophes such as drought, floods and earthquakes not only impact the economy of a nation but also affect the very subsistence of poor and vulnerable communities," reads the Op-ed. The article also cites index insurance practices in Ghana and Mongolia, where, respectively, drought index insurance covers all the growing stages of maize and index-based livestock insurance protects livestock against particularly strong winters

On Chinadialogue.net, Zhang Chun, Senior Researcher at Chinadialogue, wrote that the Chinese government is pushing the insurance industry to offer climate risk policies, as climate changes increases the frequency and severity of typhoons. In the agricultural sector, the most relevant type of insurance policy related to climate change in China is called climate index insurance. Instead of determining pay-outs on the basis of damage and loss, policies are based on a weather index that sets compensation levels based on different weather conditions, such as rainfall," Zhang adds. Click here to

According to The Climate Corporation – a tech company based in San Francisco -- data science has the potential to fundamentally improve the productivity and sustainability of global agriculture. Since 2007, the Climate Corporation has been hard at work building a technology platform that combines hyper-local weather monitoring, agronomic data modeling, and high-resolution weather simulations that are updated hourly. On the platform (see www.climate.com), Climate has built products to protect farmers with index-based insurance and improve profits with software that help farmers make more

IFC will work with the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development Insurance Agency and the Pioneer Insurance and Surety Corporation to design new insurance products that aim to protect Filipino farmers against typhoon-related losses, which are estimated to have exceeded $2.5 billion since 2009. According to the 2012 World Disaster Report, the Philippines ranks as the third most disaster-prone country in the world, with an average of 20 typhoons per year. The project will enable CARD Insurance and Pioneer Insurance to offer indemnity insurance to thousands of farmers and rural entrepreneurs

GIIF, a member of the World Bank Group, signed two grant agreements, with a combined value of $3.9 million, with the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture to expand index-based insurance to small-scale farmers in Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania. Index-based weather insurance can protect against the adverse effects of climate change and help to strengthen food security in rural communities.