Insurance for reefs

Playa del Carmen – Dozens of kilometres of coral reef and beach on Mexico’s Caribbean coast will be insured to help preserve them and reduce the impact of hurricanes, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), a large US-based charity, said on Thursday.

Rapid payouts will be triggered when stormforce winds reach a certain speed under the “insurance-for-nature” plan, a concept TNC said countries such as Belize and Honduras were considering.

TNC said about 60km of reef and beach around Cancun and Puerto Morelos to the south would be covered.

“It’s never been done before, there’s never been insurance on a reef,” Mark Way, TNC’s director for global coastal risk and resilience, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“It’s really the first time the protective value has actually been monetised.”

Healthy reefs are capable of reducing wave energy by up to 97% and can help protect coastal communities, livelihoods and infrastructure, while limiting beach erosion, said TNC.

Under this specialised policy, specific factors trigger payments, which would be made quickly and used to repair the insured section of the Mesoamerican reef, TNC said.

The announcement was made at a three-day summit at the coastal resort of Playa del Carmen in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, where environmentalists, politicians and business met to discuss the oceans. –