ARIA 2021 Annual Meeting

Vanessa Lueck, Arizona State University

The (re)insurance industry has pledged billions of dollars through InsuResilience and through partnerships with international governmental organizations and NGO’s to expand insurance coverage for the world’s poor and climate vulnerable. One of the goals is to drive climate adaptation through this insurance finance mechanism. Simultaneously, some resilience and adaptation researchers are questioning (re)insurance’s capacity to drive climate adaptation for anyone, including the climate vulnerable and poor. One approach to gain insight into this apparent contradiction is through complex adaptive systems [CAS]. Analyzing (re)insurance using a CAS lens sheds light on both the structure – relationships and interdependencies between actors – and role of individual agents that impact adaptation choices and outcomes. Moreover, a CAS lens provides potential insurance approaches which could steer current unintended negative consequence toward more just and equitable climate adaptation.