Weather Index Insurance for Agriculture and Rural Areas in Lower Income Countries

This session focuses on innovations in risk transfer for natural disasters in lower income countries. In particular, the focus is on weather index insurance products that can be used to transfer various weather-related risks. This paper discusses the linkage between weather risk and poverty, provides background information on weather index insurance products, describes requirements for the implementation of weather index insurance and possible roles for governments, donors, and international financial institutions in facilitating implementation, and briefly reviews recent efforts to provide weather index insurance products in rural areas of some middle and lower income countries. The other papers in this session build on this background material by providing detailed examples from India, Peru, Vietnam, and Kenya. Pdf 52 Ko.