Hazardous simulations: Pricing climate risk in US coastal insurance markets

Gray, Ian

doi:10.1080/03085147.2020.1853358

Cited by 19 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Weather-related forms of insurance have in recent years gained growing attention among social scientists. Indeed, there already exists a relatively large body of research discussing how climate change adaptation and mitigation are pursued through different kinds of insurance instruments (Angeli Aguiton 2019;Bridge et al 2020;Collier & Cox 2021;Gray 2021;Lehtonen 2017;Taylor 2020). These studies make it evident how widely shared, among both public and private actors, is the understanding that insurance technology is an obligatory passage point for translating large-scale environmental hazards into actionable issues.…”

Section: Turning To the Terrestrialmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, the reported failures of the index insurance programme also point to difficulties in formalising climate change as risks that can be combined with a functional financial instrument (Angeli Aguiton 2020; Johnson 2021). Other scholars have recently discussed situations where taking into account the dynamics of climate risks is made possible by new and updated models but where the political will to use such 'realistic' models is lacking and conflicts ensue Gray 2021). At the core of political tensions is the question concerning if and how risks that change can be reliably calculated, and if yes, what practical effects it will have that they are taken into account.…”

Section: Conclusion: Bypassing Climate Change With Index Insurancementioning

confidence: 99%

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Climate, Society and Elemental Insurance

Booth¹,

Lucas²,

French³

2022

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In this book, world-leading social scientists come together to provide original insights on the capacities and limitations of insurance in a changing world.Climate change is fundamentally changing the ways we insure, and the ways we think about insurance. This book moves beyond traditional economics and financial understandings of insurance to address the social and geopolitical dimensions of this powerful and pervasive part of contemporary life. Insurance shapes material and social realities, and is shaped by them in turn. The contributing authors of this book show how insurance constitutes and is constituted through the traditional elements of earth, water, air, fire, and the novel element of big data. The applied and theoretical insights presented through this novel elemental approach reveal that insurance is more dynamic, multifaceted, and spatially variegated than commonly imagined.This book is an authoritative source on the capacities and limitations of insurance. It is a go-to reference for researchers and students in the social sciences -particularly those with an interest in economics and finance, and how these intersect with geography, politics, and society. It is also relevant for those in the disaster, environmental, health, natural, and social sciences who are interested in the role of insurance in addressing risk, resilience, and adaptation.Kate Booth is a human geographer, specializing in the field of critical insurance studies. She is particularly interested in the economic and social geographies of insurance in a changing climate, and implications for inequality and inequity. Kate has also worked on projects looking at sense of place, and the role of arts and culture in urban regeneration. Her work is published in journals such as Progress in Human Geography, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, Urban Studies, and Qualitative Inquiry.

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Section: Turning To the Terrestrialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Conclusion: Bypassing Climate Change With Index Insurancementioning

confidence: 99%

Climate, Society and Elemental Insurance

Booth¹,

Lucas²,

French³

2022

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“…In the absence of such extravagant displays, the response of lenders and underwriters follows two likely paths: increase the cost of capital or withdraw services altogether. In both instances, the resilience of communities is undermined long before the event of a “natural disaster” as homeowners and businesses struggle to maintain access to insurance and credit, property values begin to suffer, and tax receipts upon which local governments depend for their operations and services begin to shrink (Elliott, 2018b; Gray, 2021; Shi, 2020). These perceptions of future risk, regardless of the performative efforts of the state, are slowly seeping into US real estate markets.…”

Section: Protection and Its Three Elements Of Circularitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The treadmill of protection: How public finance constrains climate adaptation

Gray

2021

The Anthropocene Review

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As the physical impacts of the Anthropocene begin to make themselves felt around the globe, maintaining current levels of economic prosperity, in many communities, will consume an increasing portion of public finances. This is because existing investments in property and capital will require new forms of protection if they are to continue generating stable streams of public revenue. Since Anthropocene impacts are unevenly distributed, some territories will be under more pressure than others to shift limited public spending to cope with growing levels of exposure. The sinking of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands provides a clear example of this trend of accelerating local vulnerability due to human-induced environmental change. With the bulk of state revenue tied to activities concentrated along Louisiana’s coasts, the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority has launched an ambitious plan of government-backed expenditures that seek to defend the economic viability of these zones. Yet, many actions aimed at preventing immediate loss also work to secure incumbent extractive industries, such as offshore oil and gas drilling, which themselves contribute to the very vulnerabilities requiring state intervention in the first place. This paper, borrowing from the environmental sociology of Allan Schnaiberg, considers the social consequences of this dynamic, dubbed the “treadmill of protection.”

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“…Even while Elliott describes the moral economy of loss in detail, she never lets out of sight that insurance is both an institution and a technology. This puts Underwater in conversation with recent literature addressing how technical efforts to account for climate change generate moral and political disputes over social distribution (Elliott, 2021a;Gray, 2021).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%