Collaborating for resilience

it’s near middle January and the weather is very much like it’s already summer. How will it be by March to May when the weather is expected to be at its hottest? How are the poor farmers and the agriculture investments doing?

these are questions that cross our mind as we go out another day and feel the scorching heat of the sun. this is not normal, and we are losing a lot of days and weeks, and months worth of water that would have nourished our agriculture-based economy. But we are not even experiencing the worst yet.

What are the instruments available that will ensure and insure the likelihood of losses in a very climate-vulnerable sector?

true, there is the Philippine Crop insurance Corporation (PCiC), but it has not made much dent in insuring farmers and farm investments. it’s always the farms that lose, it’s always the lowly farmers who suffer the most.

this is the issue tackled by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) Finance initiative in its report “Collaborating for resilience: Partnerships that build disaster-resilient communities and economies”, the third of a research series by the UNEP Fi Principles for sustainable insurance initiative.

in its executive summary, it reads: “Governments are increasingly burdened by the fiscal, economic and social cost of natural disasters. From a community perspective, disaster resilience plays a critical role in saving lives and protecting livelihoods and property.”

Government cannot do it alone, especially the Philippine government that is not just shackled with graft and corruption but is also a general lack of understanding for anything outside the national capital. Except that agriculture activities are all outside the national capital.

“it is clear that one of the best ways forward is to harness the capabilities and strengths of all stakeholders — governments, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), communities and businesses—to develop and implement disaster resilience activities. the growing focus on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation can benefit from multistakeholder partnerships involving the insurance industry and the broader business community. in recent years, insurers have been active in establishing partnerships that connect stakeholders with governments to foster collaborative approaches towards disaster resilience,” the report reads.

true, that for every disaster, both people and government belatedly realize that the ultimate losers are always the people themselves and that damages can run up to billions, and maybe soon even trillions of pesos, due to unplanned urban development and ignored land use plans, building permits that are hastily released after some money are released, massive environment degradation due to lack of vision on what is of greater importance – major investments that destroy forests and mountains or consistent protection of these vital resources, lack of disaster preparedness.

But the country and the government cannot continue on these crooked ways. this is simply unsustainable.

What the report points out is that there are already mechanisms being set in place that governments, non-government organizations, civil society, and the insurance sector can tap into, for as long as they share a common vision of collaborating for true resiliency.

“From the UN sustainable Development Goals, to the sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the expected universal agreement on climate change — all offer an unprecedented opportunity for collaboration. these global frameworks are opportunities for the insurance industry to work together with governments and other key stakeholders in building disaster resilience, and in promoting economic, social and environmental sustainability,” the report said.

the winners will be the ones in the insurance industry who can see the opportunities in these fastchanging disaster-riddled times.