According to the Philippines Presidential Adviser on Global Warming and Climate Change Secretary Heherson Alvarez, introducing climate-risk insurance could reduce the financial risks caused by the increasing number of environmental catastrophes in the country.
A delegation report by Alvarez to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo maintains that what the Philippines needs is an insurance-related system to help poorer countries cope with weather-related risks. A similar system pushed by Switzerland has been submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Alvarez led the Philippines delegation to the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in December 1 through 12 in Poznan, Poland.
''Climate risk insurance as a viable option for dampening the negative effects of global warming,'' Alvarez told the BusinessMirror. ''The Philippines is pushing for consideration of risk sharing and transfer mechanisms, such as climate risk insurance to address loss and damage in the Philippines [which] is vulnerable to climate change.''
The Philippines is one of the countries particularly adamant about an environmental insurance program for food product, said Alvarez.
Switzerland’s government proposed that developed countries with a global levy of $2.00 per ton of emitted carbon dioxide should commit to the insurance, he added, and went on to say that 60 percent of this fund would be retained by the taxed country, with the remaining 40% by a Multilateral Adaptation Fund for the relief and rehabilitation of affected communities.
Alvarez also said that ''The levy is intended to be both as an incentive and a disincentive to developed countries. As an incentive to shift away from consumption of fuels that emit carbon dioxide, and as a disincentive so they won’t consume more.''
The Philippine proposal would be debated by March-April next year by Action Working Groups, to be included in a draft negotiating text of all issues discussed at Poznan. The paper would then be presented in June 2009 in Bonn, Germany where the UNFCCC will draft the final versions of proposals to be submitted to vote by nations at the Conference of Parties (COP-15) in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009.
The Global Climate Risk index 2009 released in Poznan by Germanwatch (an environment and development group), over 15,000 people worldwide died last year and $80 billion in damages were caused by extreme weather.
Bangladesh was at the top of the study’s list, as the country most affected by weather calamities last year. The country was heavily damaged by cyclone Sidr, which caused over 4,000 deaths and $10 billion in damages. The “runners-up” of this grim podium were North Korea and Nicaragua.
The report also counted a total of 1,066 disasters last year, which resulted in 15,240 deaths and material losses in excess of $70.1 billion.
The Philippines themselves were in the number 10 spot in the list of weather disaster affected countries between 1997 and 2007.
