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Jerome Crugnola-Humbert
Chairperson AAE Sustainability and Climate-related Risk Working Group |
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The Climate Resilience Dialogue, a special group of a wide range of stakeholders convened by the European Commission, has now concluded its work and published its Final Report. Since its launch in November 2021, the Climate Resilience Dialogue has brought together representatives from the insurance sector, consumers, businesses, policymakers, local government and risk experts (including the Actuarial Association of Europe) to discuss and propose solutions to narrow the growing climate protection gap (the difference between economic losses and what is insured) and to increase climate resilience in Europe, with a specific focus on climate adaptation.
We welcome the report as a useful and powerful reference document which investigates how to raise climate risk awareness, improve risk assessments and facilitate the implementation of risk reduction measures. It explores the largely untapped potential for Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and examines how various insurance-based solutions can help addressing the climate protection gap. The report also provides a detailed analysis of the main climate-related risks in Europe, covering floods, wildfires, heatwaves, droughts and storms. The recommendations set forth in the report are a collective contribution to individual and community resilience by promoting risk awareness, preparedness, and proactive measures against climate change.
The Actuarial Association of Europe has been an active part of this Dialogue since the start and during the three years of hard work it took us to get to this final report. We had two representatives in the working group, with me in my role as chairperson for Sustainability and Climate-related Risk working group at the AAE and support from my colleague Loudina Erasmus who chairs the AAE Risk Management committee. Risk experts, among which actuaries, have an important role to play in designing new solutions to ensure that the insurance sector continues to play a pivotal role in climate adaptation.
I would like to thank the European Commission for inviting us to participate in this work and for their trust in asking me to help write the report, as well as the rapporteurs and our fellow stakeholders with whom we have been collaborating over the past three years. This report is not the end of the work though, but only the beginning. There remains much to do to implement the various solutions proposed in the report, and this will require the active collaboration of many public authorities, businesses, experts and individuals.
Although the primary focus of this work was on climate change adaptation, please keep in mind that CO2 emissions are the root cause of the problem, so the mitigation of climate change should be tackled with the utmost determination by the financial sector thanks to its leverage with investees, counterparties and clients.
I invite you to read the European Commission’s press release, the Climate Resilience Dialogue report, and also to reflect on how you and the organizations you are employed by or affiliated with can contribute to implement the recommendations proposed by the Dialogue in order to improve climate resilience for the benefit of all European citizens and organizations.
13 September 2024
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