Insurance and Climate Resilience: Who Pays When Climate Disaster Strikes?
As climate impacts intensify, the costs of extreme weather, infrastructure damage, business disruption, and community recovery are rising rapidly. Yet many of the systems designed to manage risk—from insurance and public finance to social protection and investment frameworks—were built for a different era. The result is a growing gap between the scale of climate risks and the mechanisms available to absorb them.
This discussion will explore how governments, insurers, investors, financial institutions, and communities can work together to build more resilient approaches to climate risk. Participants will examine emerging tools such as parametric insurance, disaster risk financing, early warning systems, and climate-responsive social protection, alongside the broader role of insurance markets and public policy in supporting adaptation and recovery.
The conversation will also address deeper questions about responsibility and accountability. As climate-related losses increase, who should bear the costs? What obligations do investors and financial institutions have to address the social and environmental impacts associated with their investments? And how can risk-sharing mechanisms be designed to protect vulnerable communities without creating new forms of dependence or exclusion?
At a time when climate resilience is becoming an economic as well as environmental imperative, the challenge is shifting from understanding risk to financing and managing it. This conversation will explore how societies can move from reacting to disasters toward building systems that anticipate shocks, strengthen resilience, and ensure that recovery is faster, fairer, and more financially sustainable.
Discussion Group Leaders
Amy Wevill is Director at AW Research & Events, advancing climate dialogue through high-level events and stakeholder engagement across business, finance, and policy.
Conor MacDonald is Attorney, Financial Strategies at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), advancing climate-responsive investment and financial accountability through legal advocacy.
Discussion Questions
How should responsibility for climate-related losses and damages be shared among governments, insurers, investors, businesses, and communities?
What role can tools such as parametric insurance, disaster risk financing, and climate-responsive social protection play in strengthening resilience before disasters occur?
How can insurance systems support climate adaptation while remaining affordable and accessible to vulnerable populations and high-risk regions?
What new financial mechanisms or accountability frameworks are needed to ensure that the costs and impacts of climate-related shocks are managed more equitably?