Managing weather risk for agricultural development and disaster risk reduction
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Material Information

Title:
Managing weather risk for agricultural development and disaster risk reduction
Creator:
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
World Food Programme (WFP)
Publisher:
World Food Programme (WFP)
Publication Date:
Copyright Date:
2011
Language:
English

Subjects

Subjects / Keywords:
Risk management ( lcshac )
Disaster relief ( lcshac )
Agriculture ( lcshac )
IFAD-WFP Weather Risk Management Facility ( lcshac )
Genre:
non-fiction ( marcgt )
Spatial Coverage:
Asia -- China
Africa -- Ethiopia

Notes

Summary:
The document presents weather index insurance (WII) as one component of the Weather Risk Management Facility’s (WRMF) innovative weather and climate risk management tools to reduce the severe effects of weather-related disasters on poor communities dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. This short note begins with a discussion of global poverty, and its concentration in rural areas around the world. Close to 1.4 billion people survive on less than US$1.25 a day, with seventy percent of this population residing in the countryside where they are dependent on agricultural production to survive, often facing the specter of drought and flooding, thus exposed to food insecurity. Failing to manage weather risks in agriculture disrupts development and poverty reduction objectives. One of the problems identified with conventional approaches to mitigation, such as financial bailouts, debt forgiveness, and emergency relief, is that they do not address livelihoods. The document presents weather index insurance (WII) as an alternative option. While conventional agricultural insurance is based on in-field measurements of loss to determine how much to compensate farmers, WII is a system suitable for the conditions of farmers in the developing world that make such assessments more problematic. WII is based on objective parameters that signify a disaster situation, such as rainfall and temperature thresholds set to correspond with particular levels of damage likely to be suffered by policyholders under such conditions. All policyholders within a geographic location are paid out according to the same contract, based on parameter measurements from the same weather station. This removes the need for direct loss assessments in regions where small holders are often numerous and insurance markets are underdeveloped, thus making assessment more costly. The document then highlights weather insurance pilots established in China and Ethiopia by WRMF. WRMF emphasizes in the document that WII is most effective when it is incorporated within a larger program of disaster risk management. The organization’s efforts to build the capacity of local stakeholders for weather risk management, improve weather services, develop national risk management frameworks, strategies, and policies, and promotion of inclusive systems for the rural poor display WRMF’s commitment to comprehensively addressing disaster risk. ( English,English )
Subject:
Disaster Risk Reduction
Citation/Reference:
Managing weather risk for agricultural development and disaster risk reduction. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD); World Food Programme (WFP).

Record Information

Source Institution:
Florida International University
Rights Management:
Refer to main document/publisher for use rights.
Resource Identifier:
FI13010992

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Aggregations:
Disaster Risk Reduction