Climate and disaster risk insurance in low income countries: reflections on the importance of indicators and frameworks for monitoring performance and impact
The use of climate and disaster risk insurance (CDRI) in low income countries has received significant interest over the last decade, as its ability to enable faster and more reliable access to funds is seen as an important mechanism to help strengthen the resilience of poor and vulnerable communities. This has led to national and international commitments and efforts to increase CDRI coverage to the poor and vulnerable. What remains unclear is the monitoring and evaluation of these instruments, with a lack of consensus on what indicators to use and what information to collect. A particular challenge is how to measure performance and impact. This paper categorizes the use of CDRI across four major policy domains (disaster aid, social protection, climate adaptation and loss and damage to climate change) and explores the meaning of success from different stakeholder perspectives. We review how CDRI is currently evaluated, what assessment frameworks exist, which indicators are used and what evidence is emerging from our survey based local level data. We review 7 global/regional and 3 national level CDRI schemes and support the analysis with 41 key informant interviews (KIIs) and 17 focus group discussions (FGDs) in India and across insurance experts in Africa. We highlight the diversity of success criteria at the project and actor level when contrasted with user data from the ground. While a multitude of indicators, frameworks and methodologies are being used to define success of CDRI, our findings indicate a need for transparent monitoring and evaluation frameworks applied across insurance domains to enable greater scrutiny and to assist those funding, demanding or supplying insurance instruments.