Parallel session 3: Connecting insurance to climate-smart technologies and practice
Experiences from index insurance initiatives in India, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Senegal suggest that bundling insurance with production inputs such as drought-adapted seed and other climate smart agricultural technologies and practices (and sometimes finance) can make insurance more attractive to farmers.
Well-designed index insurance can achieve specific risk objectives such as protecting farmers’ livelihoods in the face of major climate shocks by enhancing farmer uptake of climate smart agricultural technologies and practices. In insurance program this have been achieved either through the direct bundling of farm inputs with insurance, or through including insurance within a larger risk management portfolio. Examples of the former include ACRE Africa and insurance linked with credit in Zambia. The R4 Rural Resilience Initiative in Ethiopia is a good example of the latter approach whereby farmers can pay for the insurance through labor on climate-smart agricultural projects (Food for Assets), alongside access to credit and savings.
The session will explore further the issue of bundling insurance with climate smart technologies and practices drawing on existing case studies and participants’ experiences and perspectives.
Chair/Moderator: Jon Hellin, Value Chain and Poverty Specialist, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)
Speaker: Wellingtone Maaka Wasike, Head of Marketing, Agri SeedCo Kenya (TBC)
Rapporteur: Helen Greatrex, Associate Research Scientist – Index Insurance, International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI)
About the parallel sessions:
There will be 3 breakout parallel sessions that will provide opportunities to focus discussions around partnerships and pathways for tackling the big challenges surrounding the following themes:
- Connecting insurance with farmers’ needs
- Big data to improve index insurance products
- Connecting insurance to climate-smart technologies and practice
Each of the parallel sessions will be structured as interactive sessions, where both presenters and audiences are given the opportunity to interact, collaboratively explore and have in-depth discussions surrounding the theme of the session.
The interactive session will follow the ‘World Café’ format, which is designed to mimic a café environment to enable a flow of conversation between participants. The session consists of four meeting stations (roundtables) with a designated host on each table. The role of the host will be to introduce the topic of the table and also summarize the discussions taking place. Participants are divided into four subgroups and will rotate round the room, spending approximately 10 minutes at each of the stations. Each group is invited to discuss and write their comments on post-its that they position and organize on the flipcharts provided.
See the event page on the CCAFS website: Scaling up agricultural adaptation through insurance