Climate change and increased risk for the insurance sector: a global perspective and an assessment for the Netherlands

Wouter Botzen, Jeroen van den Bergh and L. Bouwer (laurens.bouwer@ivm.vu.nl)

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2010, vol. 52, issue 3, 577-598

Abstract: Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. As a consequence, economic losses caused by natural catastrophes could increase significantly. This will have considerable consequences for the insurance sector. On the one hand, increased risk from weather extremes requires assessing expected changes in damage and including adequate climate change projections in risk management. On the other hand, climate change can also bring new business opportunities for insurers. This paper gives an overview of the consequences of climate change for the insurance sector and discusses several strategies to cope with and adapt to increased risks. The particular focus is on the Dutch insurance sector, as the Netherlands is extremely vulnerable to climate change, especially with regard to extreme precipitation and flooding. Current risk sharing arrangements for weather risks are examined while potential new business opportunities, adaptation strategies, and public–private partnerships are identified. Copyright The Author(s) 2010

Keywords: Adaptation; Business opportunities; Catastrophe losses; Climate change impacts; Insurance sector; Public–private partnerships; The Netherlands (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11069-009-9404-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:nathaz:v:52:y:2010:i:3:p:577-598

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11069

DOI: 10.1007/s11069-009-9404-1

Access Statistics for this article

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards is currently edited by Thomas Glade, Tad S. Murty and Vladimír Schenk

More articles in Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards from Springer, International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla (sonal.shukla@springer.com) and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (indexing@springernature.com).