Insurance and Ecosystems
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Insurance for Nature and Biodiversity
Insurance is emerging as an important tool at the intersection of biodiversity conservation, climate adaptation, disaster-risk reduction, and sustainable finance. Traditionally, insurance has been understood primarily as a mechanism for transferring financial losses after disasters. New approaches extend that role by using insurance pricing, underwriting standards, parametric products, guarantees, investment strategies, and risk modeling to protect ecosystems, encourage restoration, and recognize the economic value of natural systems.
This development reflects a growing recognition that biodiversity loss is not only an environmental problem. Businesses, communities, governments, and financial institutions depend on ecosystem services such as flood protection, water regulation, soil fertility, pollination, fisheries, forest resilience, and coastal protection. When those ecological systems deteriorate, financial losses can increase, insurance claims can rise, investments can become more vulnerable, and some risks may become increasingly difficult or expensive to insure.
At the same time, healthy ecosystems can reduce risk. Wetlands absorb floodwaters, coral reefs weaken waves, mangroves protect coastlines, forests influence wildfire behavior and water systems, and biodiversity can stabilize ecological productivity. Insurance therefore has a potential dual relationship with nature: insurers can protect ecosystems financially, while ecosystems themselves can function as forms of natural risk protection.
From Risk Transfer to Nature-Positive Insurance
Nature-positive insurance expands the traditional concept of insurance beyond compensating losses. Insurers can influence environmental outcomes through decisions about which activities they insure, how risks are priced, what conditions are attached to coverage, and how insurance-company assets are invested.
Underwriting policies can encourage businesses to reduce harmful environmental impacts or adopt stronger safeguards. Insurers can also refuse or restrict coverage for activities that create unacceptable risks to protected areas, threatened ecosystems, fisheries, rivers, forests, or biodiversity.
Insurance can similarly provide incentives for resilience. When ecosystem restoration measurably reduces expected losses, insurance premiums, deductibles, or other financial terms may potentially reflect that reduction. This creates the possibility of a feedback loop in which conservation lowers risk, lower risk creates financial savings, and some of those savings help finance further conservation.
Nature-positive insurance is consequently becoming part of a broader sustainable-finance system that includes biodiversity investment, resilience bonds, guarantees, first-loss capital, environmental liability insurance, conservation finance, and other mechanisms designed to mobilize private investment for ecological protection and restoration.
Biodiversity Risk and Insurance Underwriting
Biodiversity loss can affect insurance companies through multiple channels. Physical risks arise when ecosystem degradation increases exposure to floods, droughts, wildfire, crop failures, coastal storms, disease, or other hazards. Transition risks may arise from changing environmental laws, regulations, technologies, consumer expectations, and corporate responsibilities. Liability risks can emerge when businesses are accused of causing environmental damage or failing to disclose or manage nature-related risks.
Insurers also face biodiversity exposure through their investment portfolios. Companies whose revenues, facilities, supply chains, or assets depend heavily on ecosystem services may become financially vulnerable when natural systems deteriorate.
As a result, insurers and financial regulators are developing methods for mapping nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities. Geospatial datasets can identify whether corporate assets are located near protected areas, sensitive ecosystems, threatened species, forests, wetlands, or other biodiversity features. Frameworks such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures and its LEAP approach are also influencing how companies and financial institutions evaluate nature-related exposure.
Despite this progress, biodiversity risk remains difficult to quantify. Ecosystems are complex, ecological change may occur over long periods, and relationships between biodiversity loss and financial losses are not always easily modeled. Data availability, scenario analysis, valuation methods, and regulatory capacity remain important challenges.
Coral Reef and Marine Ecosystem Insurance
Coral reef insurance is among the most visible examples of insurance designed specifically around natural assets. Parametric reef insurance can provide rapid payouts when predetermined conditions—such as hurricane wind speeds or marine heat thresholds—are reached. Because payment depends on an agreed trigger rather than a lengthy assessment of individual damage, funds can become available quickly for reef inspection, debris removal, stabilization, and restoration.
Programs in Hawaiʻi, Mexico, Indonesia, the Maldives, Fiji, and other locations demonstrate growing interest in this approach. Reef insurance is particularly important because coral reefs provide benefits extending far beyond biodiversity conservation. They support fisheries and tourism, provide habitat, reduce wave energy, and protect coastal communities and property from storm damage.
The concept is also being explored in fisheries and aquaculture. Parametric insurance based on environmental conditions may help fishing communities and seafood producers manage marine heatwaves, storms, disease, and other climate-related shocks. Conservation-oriented fisheries insurance could potentially reduce pressure on fish stocks during periods of ecological stress by providing temporary financial protection to affected livelihoods.
Wetlands, Mangroves, and Natural Flood Protection
Wetlands, mangroves, floodplains, salt marshes, dunes, and other natural features can function as protective infrastructure. They absorb or redirect water, reduce wave energy, slow runoff, and lower flood exposure.
Research using insurance claims and flood records has increasingly attempted to quantify these benefits. Studies of U.S. wetlands, for example, indicate that wetland loss can substantially increase insured flood damages. Research on coastal wetlands and mangroves similarly shows that these ecosystems can protect people and property during severe storms.
These findings have important implications for insurance. If natural infrastructure measurably reduces expected losses, insurers and governments may be able to incorporate those benefits into risk models, premiums, disaster planning, and investment decisions.
This idea also applies to urban areas. Parks, rain gardens, urban forests, green roofs, connected green spaces, restored floodplains, and living shorelines may reduce flooding and other climate risks while simultaneously improving habitat and providing recreational, health, and ecological benefits.
A continuing challenge is ensuring that nature-based resilience programs are equitable. The distribution of protection, investment, insurance savings, and environmental benefits can differ substantially among communities.
Forests, Wildfire, and Restoration Insurance
Wildfire provides another important example of the connection between ecosystem management and insurance. Forest thinning, prescribed fire, fuel reduction, and other ecological forestry practices can reduce wildfire intensity and potential losses under appropriate conditions.
Wildfire resilience insurance attempts to translate those reductions into insurance benefits. Projects in California have demonstrated approaches in which modeled reductions in wildfire exposure associated with forest treatments can affect insurance premiums, deductibles, or coverage conditions.
Such mechanisms could create a financial incentive for continued forest restoration. Rather than treating insurance solely as compensation after wildfire, insurers could help recognize investments that reduce risk before disasters occur.
Insurance is also being considered as a way to protect restoration projects themselves. Long-term ecological restoration faces risks from storms, fire, drought, project failure, and other events. Insurance or guarantees that reduce these risks could make restoration projects more attractive to private investors and help mobilize larger amounts of capital for conservation.
Urban forests are another emerging area. Because trees provide shade, cooling, stormwater management, carbon storage, habitat, and other ecosystem services, some initiatives are examining whether forests and urban trees themselves can be treated as insurable assets.
Agriculture, Soil Biodiversity, and Human-Wildlife Conflict
Agricultural insurance demonstrates both the opportunities and complexities of combining financial insurance with ecological resilience.
Weather-index and crop insurance can protect farmers from drought, rainfall variability, and other climate shocks. Index-based livestock insurance similarly uses indicators such as satellite measurements of vegetation or forage conditions to provide payouts to pastoral households during severe drought.
However, insurance can also influence land-management decisions. Poorly designed insurance may reduce incentives to adopt conservation practices, while better-designed policies can link eligibility or financial benefits to soil conservation, wetland protection, sustainable land management, or other resilience measures.
Soil biodiversity itself can provide a form of natural insurance. Diverse soil ecosystems contribute to nutrient cycling, pest control, water retention, and agricultural productivity, potentially making farms more resilient to environmental variability.
Insurance is also being used to address human-wildlife conflict. Farmers and pastoral communities living near wildlife may suffer crop destruction, livestock losses, or other costs. Insurance and compensation mechanisms can reduce those financial burdens while lowering incentives for retaliatory killing of wildlife. Program design is crucial because premiums, verification methods, payout speed, conservation requirements, and long-term financial sustainability all influence whether such schemes succeed.
Biodiversity as Natural Insurance
The idea of biodiversity as insurance predates many modern conservation-finance products. Ecological research has long suggested that biological diversity can stabilize ecosystem functioning because different species respond differently to environmental disturbances.
If one species declines under particular conditions, another may continue performing a similar ecological function. Diversity can therefore reduce variability in ecosystem productivity and increase resilience to environmental change. This concept is often described as the biodiversity insurance hypothesis.
The principle resembles diversification in finance. A diversified portfolio is less dependent on the performance of a single asset; similarly, an ecosystem containing diverse species, populations, habitats, or ecological functions may be less dependent on any single component.
This ecological stability can have economic consequences. More reliable ecosystems may provide more dependable services such as food production, water regulation, pest control, fisheries productivity, carbon storage, and protection from natural hazards.
Researchers have therefore developed the concept of the "insurance value" of biodiversity and natural capital—the economic value created when ecological diversity and resilience reduce uncertainty about future ecosystem services.
Natural Assurance and the Economic Value of Ecosystems
A related concept is natural assurance. Rather than purchasing protection exclusively through a conventional insurance contract, society can receive risk-reduction benefits directly from ecosystems.
A wetland that lowers flood losses, a mangrove forest that reduces storm surge, or a forest that stabilizes slopes provides a form of protection even though no insurance company issues the service. The ecosystem itself supplies part of the protection.
Natural assurance approaches seek to quantify these benefits and connect them with investment, insurance, public policy, and conservation. If the avoided losses generated by healthy ecosystems can be measured, part of that economic value may justify investments in restoration and protection.
This creates an important distinction between "insurance for nature" and "insurance from nature." Insurance for nature provides financial protection to ecosystems or conservation projects. Insurance from nature refers to the risk-reduction and resilience benefits that functioning ecosystems provide to society.
In practice, the two concepts can reinforce one another. Insurance can help finance ecological recovery, while ecological recovery can reduce future insured losses.
Regulation, Governance, and Financial Stability
Nature-related insurance is increasingly attracting the attention of regulators and financial supervisors. Biodiversity loss can affect insurance-company assets, liabilities, solvency, underwriting portfolios, and long-term financial stability.
Regulatory initiatives are therefore beginning to examine whether insurers adequately identify and manage nature-related risks. Emerging approaches include disclosure frameworks, scenario analysis, biodiversity metrics, portfolio assessments, geospatial analysis, and supervisory guidance.
Governance is also important because ecosystems often have characteristics of shared or public resources. Questions may arise about who owns an ecosystem, who pays insurance premiums, who receives payouts, who decides how restoration money is spent, and how benefits are distributed among communities.
Insurance cannot replace environmental regulation or conservation policy. Its effectiveness depends on ecological data, credible restoration standards, appropriate legal frameworks, community participation, effective public institutions, and clear conservation objectives.
Opportunities and Limitations
Insurance for nature offers several potential benefits. It can provide rapid financing after disasters, reduce investment risk, encourage preventive conservation, reward resilience measures, support restoration, and help translate ecosystem services into economic terms that financial institutions can incorporate into decisions.
However, insurance also has important limitations. Ecological damage may be difficult to measure or reverse. Parametric products can create basis risk when a financial trigger does not perfectly correspond with actual ecological damage. Some ecosystems may be impossible to value adequately in monetary terms, and insurance does not compensate for irreversible extinction or the loss of unique ecological and cultural values.
Affordability is another concern. Communities or conservation organizations responsible for important ecosystems may lack the resources to purchase insurance. Public-private partnerships, donor funding, pooled risk mechanisms, conservation trusts, and blended-finance arrangements may therefore be necessary.
There are also broader concerns about financializing nature. Treating ecosystems as assets can help direct money toward conservation, but economic valuation should not imply that biodiversity is valuable only when it generates measurable financial benefits. Ecological integrity, cultural significance, intrinsic value, and intergenerational responsibility remain important considerations.
Conclusion
The relationship between insurance and biodiversity is expanding rapidly. Insurance is moving beyond its traditional role as a mechanism for compensating losses and becoming part of a broader system of environmental risk management, conservation finance, climate adaptation, and ecosystem restoration.
Coral reef policies, wildfire resilience insurance, wetland and mangrove risk modeling, agricultural index products, human-wildlife insurance, nature-related underwriting frameworks, and restoration-finance initiatives demonstrate the variety of ways insurance can interact with ecosystems.
The underlying principle is increasingly clear: environmental degradation can create financial risk, while healthy ecosystems can reduce it. Recognizing that relationship gives insurers, governments, investors, conservation organizations, and communities an incentive to treat biodiversity and natural infrastructure as essential components of economic resilience.
The long-term significance of nature-related insurance may therefore extend well beyond new insurance products. Its larger contribution could be helping financial systems recognize that protecting ecosystems is not separate from managing risk. In many cases, preserving biodiversity and ecological resilience is itself a form of protection against future economic and social loss.
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General and Emerging Insurance for Nature and Biodiversity Finance
1. Biodiversity Finance Instruments and Mechanisms | OECD | OECD | 26 August 2026
Examines insurance, guarantees, first-loss capital, parametric products, resilience bonds, and other risk-sharing mechanisms that can help mobilize private investment for biodiversity conservation and nature-based solutions.
2. Designing Insurance for Nature: A Practical Guide | UNDP BIOFIN | BIOFIN | 14 July 2026
Provides practical guidance for governments, conservation organizations, insurers, and investors seeking to design insurance products that protect biodiversity and finance ecosystem conservation and restoration.
3. Policy and Finance Must Work Together to Address Biodiversity Loss and Damage | IUCN | International Union for Conservation of Nature | July 2026
Discusses insurance incentives, resilience credits, lower premiums, ecosystem restoration, and other financial mechanisms that could shift insurance from post-disaster compensation toward preventive conservation.
4. Insurance for Nature: Its Role in Addressing Risks to Nature and Biodiversity | Josphine Njoki | AB Entheos | 10 April 2026
Reviews coral reef, wildfire, drought, and human-wildlife insurance and outlines key requirements for creating viable biodiversity insurance programs.
Biodiversity Risk, Underwriting and Nature-Related Investing
5. State of the Market: Insurance for Biodiversity Net Gain Risks | Rebecca Delaney | The Insurer | 13 August 2026
Examines the emerging insurance market surrounding biodiversity net gain projects, including risks associated with habitat delivery, long-term ecological obligations, landowner responsibilities, and failure to achieve legally required biodiversity outcomes.
6. What’s the Business Case for Biodiversity? We Asked IBAT | Munich Re Risk Management Partners | Munich Re | 23 June 2026
Explores how insurers and other financial institutions can use biodiversity datasets to identify protected areas, threatened species, ecosystem dependencies, and nature-related risks across assets and portfolios.
7. Assessing Biodiversity Risk in Investment Portfolios | Hannah Layman et al. | LSEG / FTSE Russell | 22 May 2026
Explores methods for identifying corporate exposure to biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, providing tools relevant to insurers whose investment portfolios may contain substantial nature-related dependencies and transition risks.
8. Tackling the Insurance Protection Gap: Leveraging Climate Mitigation and Nature to Increase Resilience | WWF | TNFD Knowledge Bank | January 2026
Examines how deteriorating climate and ecosystem conditions contribute to insurance protection gaps across property, agriculture, health, liability, and business interruption and considers nature restoration as part of the solution.
9. Biodiversity and Nature Risk Edition | Munich Re Risk Management Partners | Munich Re | December 2025
Describes geospatial tools for assessing corporate facilities and portfolios against biodiversity-sensitive locations, ecosystem conditions, protected areas, species risks, and other nature-related indicators relevant to insurance underwriting.
10. DUAL Launches First Insurance Product to Support Biodiversity Net Gain | DUAL | DUAL Group | 25 November 2025
Describes an insurance product designed for biodiversity net gain obligations, illustrating how insurers can cover financial risks arising when ecological enhancement commitments cannot be delivered as originally planned.
11. Biodiversity Net Gain: Key Emerging Risks and Insurance Considerations | Marsh | Marsh | 15 October 2025
Reviews liability, contractual, professional, land-management, and ecological risks created by biodiversity net gain requirements and discusses how conventional and emerging insurance products may respond.
12. Report on Biodiversity Risk Management by Insurers | EIOPA | European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority | 30 June 2025
Reviews how European insurers identify, measure, and manage biodiversity risks within Solvency II risk-management systems and highlights major data and modeling challenges.
13. EIOPA Notes Positive Early Steps by Insurers in Addressing Biodiversity Risk | EIOPA | European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority | 30 June 2025
Reports that insurers increasingly recognize biodiversity as an emerging financial risk but still struggle to quantify ecosystem dependencies and incorporate them into solvency assessments.
14. UNDP, TNFD, and KPMG Partner to Launch NATURE-INSURE | UNDP, TNFD and KPMG | United Nations Development Programme | 27 June 2025
Introduces a global capacity-building program designed to help insurance supervisors understand biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, nature-related financial exposures, and the application of TNFD assessment approaches.
15. Rooted in Risk: Framing Nature-Related Assessments for Insurers | PSI Working Group for Nature | TNFD | June 2025
Provides insurance-specific guidance for identifying nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities across life, health, and non-life underwriting portfolios.
16. Nature-Insurance Nexus: Results of SIF Survey on Nature-Related Risks | Sustainable Insurance Forum | UNDP Sustainable Finance Hub | 22 April 2025
Summarizes how insurance supervisors are approaching biodiversity and ecosystem risks and identifies gaps involving data, modeling, scenario analysis, governance, regulatory capacity, and industry awareness.
17. Are You Ready for Mandatory Biodiversity Reporting and Responsibilities? | WTW | Willis Towers Watson | March 2025
Examines expanding corporate biodiversity disclosure requirements and the implications for governance, directors and officers liability, environmental exposures, and insurance programs.
18. French Insurers Facing the Risks Associated with Biodiversity Loss | ACPR | Banque de France | 26 February 2025
Examines French insurers' indirect exposure to biodiversity through investments and underwriting of companies dependent on ecosystem services.
19. The Rise of Nature Risk | Allianz Commercial | Allianz | February 2025
Discusses how ecosystem degradation, water scarcity, biodiversity decline, deforestation, and regulatory change can affect businesses and create new underwriting challenges.
20. Allianz Biodiversity Case Study | Allianz | Allianz | 2025
Describes Allianz's use of the TNFD LEAP approach to assess biodiversity-related impacts, dependencies, and risks within investment and property-casualty insurance portfolios.
21. How EMEA-Based Insurers Are Approaching Nature-Related Investing | State Street Global Advisors | State Street | 2025
Reviews how insurers are beginning to incorporate biodiversity and natural-capital considerations into investment strategies, stewardship programs, portfolio analysis, and sustainability frameworks.
22. Consultation on a Report on Biodiversity Risk Management by Insurers | EIOPA | European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority | 4 December 2024
Sets out proposed supervisory approaches for assessing how biodiversity loss affects insurer investments, insured losses, risk portfolios, and own-risk solvency assessments.
23. Annual Insurance Review 2024: Climate and Biodiversity Risk | RPC | RPC | 11 January 2024
Reviews legal and insurance developments associated with climate change, biodiversity litigation, ecosystem protection, corporate liability, and emerging environmental disclosures.
24. EIOPA Staff Paper on Nature-Related Risks and Impacts for Insurance | EIOPA | European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority | 29 March 2023
Maps transmission channels through which biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation can affect insurer assets, liabilities, underwriting portfolios, investments, and financial stability.
25. Underwriting the Biodiversity Crisis | Cody Dong and Arne Philipp Klug | MSCI | 27 March 2023
Connects biodiversity degradation with flood, crop, health, and environmental-liability insurance risks and explores using geospatial biodiversity data in underwriting.
26. 3 Ways for the Insurance Industry to Promote Biodiversity | Amy Barnes | Marsh | 16 November 2022
Identifies underwriting, investment, and risk-management strategies through which insurance companies can reduce activities damaging nature while supporting restoration and biodiversity-positive business practices.
27. Environmental Impact on Insurance | Deloitte | Deloitte | n.d.
Explains how natural-capital loss can raise claims, increase premiums, weaken investment returns, affect insurability, and create systemic risks across insurance portfolios.
28. Nature and Biodiversity | Zurich Insurance Group | Zurich | n.d.
Describes the connections among biodiversity decline, ecosystem services, climate risk, corporate activity, investment, and insurance and outlines the insurer's approach to nature-related sustainability issues.
Nature-Positive Insurance, Regulation and Governance
29. Beyond Risk Transfer—Rethinking the Role of Green Insurance in Sustainability Policy | Multiple Authors | Sustainability | 12 August 2026
Reviews insurance as a broader sustainability-policy instrument, including its potential to influence environmental behavior, biodiversity protection, climate adaptation, resilience investment, and sustainable finance.
30. Insurance Update: Biodiversity and Nature | ShareAction | ShareAction | February 2025
Assesses insurance-sector performance on biodiversity and nature, examining whether insurers use underwriting policies, exclusions, engagement, targets, and investment strategies to address ecosystem degradation.
31. Launch of Priority Action Guide for Insurers to Align with the Global Biodiversity Framework | UNEP FI | UNEP Finance Initiative | 2 December 2024
Introduces practical priority actions that insurance companies can take to reduce nature-related risk and support biodiversity conservation through underwriting and business strategy.
32. Stocktake on Nature-Related Risks: Supervisory and Regulatory Approaches and Perspectives on Financial Risk | Financial Stability Board | FSB | 18 July 2024
Surveys how financial regulators and supervisors worldwide are considering biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation as potential sources of financial instability affecting banks, insurers, and investment institutions.
33. A Primer on Biodiversity and Nature-Related Risks, Opportunities and Regulation for Financial Institutions | Nick Spencer | Milliman | 22 February 2024
Introduces biodiversity-related physical, transition, liability, and systemic risks and discusses emerging disclosure and regulatory expectations relevant to insurers and other financial institutions.
34. Insuring a Resilient Nature-Positive Future | UNEP FI Principles for Sustainable Insurance | UNEP Finance Initiative | 2024
Provides global guidance for insurers seeking to integrate nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities into underwriting and support Global Biodiversity Framework goals.
35. Embedded in Nature: Nature-Related Economic and Financial Risks and Policy Considerations | IMF Staff | International Monetary Fund | 2024
Examines economic dependencies on nature and the pathways through which biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, and environmental policy changes can propagate through financial institutions and economies.
36. Nature-Positive Insurance: Evolving Thinking and Practices | UNEP FI | UNEP Finance Initiative | 12 September 2023
Defines the evolving concept of nature-positive insurance and reviews insurance-sector approaches involving ecosystems, pollution, fisheries, hydropower, protected areas, reefs, and mangroves.
37. Nature and the Insurance Industry: Taking Action Towards a Nature-Positive Economy | Maryam Golnaraghi and Adrien Mellot | The Geneva Association | 24 November 2022
Examines how nature loss affects insurers as risk carriers and investors and identifies opportunities for reinsurance to support more resilient and nature-positive economic activity.
38. Insurers Are Innovating to Address Nature Loss | The Geneva Association | The Geneva Association | 24 November 2022
Summarizes insurer innovation related to biodiversity loss, ecosystem dependence, nature-related financial risks, and development of nature-positive business models.
39. Why Nature Matters: Nature-Related Risks and Opportunities for Insurance Underwriting | Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership | TNFD | September 2022
Explores how dependence on ecosystem services affects underwriting and identifies opportunities for insurers to encourage nature-positive economic activity through risk assessment and coverage decisions.
40. Insuring a Nature Positive World: An Insurers' Guide to Hydropower | Alice Merry and Adriana Morales | World Wildlife Fund | 22 June 2022
Provides guidance for insurers underwriting hydropower projects and recommends stronger safeguards addressing freshwater biodiversity, river connectivity, protected areas, environmental impacts, and community risks.
41. How Insurers Play a Key Role in Combating Harmful Hydropower | World Wildlife Fund | WWF | 22 June 2022
Explains how insurance underwriting can influence hydropower development by requiring environmental safeguards and declining coverage for projects posing unacceptable risks to rivers and biodiversity.
42. New Risks, New Opportunities: Harnessing Environmental Pollution Liability Insurance for a Sustainable Economy | UNEP FI | UNEP Finance Initiative | June 2022
Examines how pollution-liability insurance can strengthen environmental risk management, biodiversity protection, loss prevention, and corporate accountability.
43. Insuring Nature's Survival: The Role of Insurance in Meeting the Financial Need to Preserve Biodiversity | Samantha Jane Cook and Susan Claire Holliday | World Bank | 27 April 2022
Examines how insurance products, risk pooling, guarantees, and other financial mechanisms could mobilize additional resources for biodiversity conservation and reduce risks facing nature-based investments.
44. COP15 – A Turning Point for Nature and the Insurance Sector | UNEP Finance Initiative | UNEP FI | 2022
Discusses implications of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework for insurance companies, including underwriting practices, investment decisions, disclosure, risk assessment, and nature-positive finance.
45. SIF Scoping Study: Nature-Related Risks in the Global Insurance Sector | Sustainable Insurance Forum | UNDP | 17 November 2021
Reviews the emerging evidence connecting ecosystem degradation with insurance-sector risks and considers how supervisors can begin integrating nature into prudential oversight.
46. Nature Is the Answer | Gillian Rutherford-Liske and Samantha Dunn | Swiss Re | 11 October 2021
Explains why ecosystem degradation affects numerous insurance lines and argues that underwriting and investment decisions should recognize natural infrastructure and biodiversity benefits.
47. Nature-Positive Insurance Series | UNEP FI and Convention on Biological Diversity | UNEP Finance Initiative | October 2021
Brings together discussions of nature-related risk assessment, insurance underwriting, ecosystem investment, biodiversity targets, disclosure, and regulatory approaches.
48. Pricing Nature in Insurance | Swiss Re Institute | Swiss Re | 8 June 2021
Examines emerging nature-related disclosure requirements and considers how biodiversity information may influence insurance reporting, risk selection, and pricing.
49. UN, WWF and World's Insurers Unite to Launch First Insurance Industry Guide to Protect UNESCO World Heritage Sites | UNEP Finance Initiative | UNEP FI | 15 October 2019
Reports an insurance-sector initiative encouraging companies to identify and avoid underwriting or investing in activities that threaten internationally important natural and cultural sites.
50. Protecting Our World Heritage, Insuring a Sustainable Future | UNEP FI, WWF and UNESCO | UNEP Finance Initiative | 2019
Provides guidance intended to prevent insurers from underwriting projects or activities that could damage UNESCO World Heritage Sites and their associated ecosystems.
51. Risk Assessment and Control of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing for the Marine Insurance Industry | UNEP FI and Partners | UNEP Finance Initiative | 2019
Provides tools for marine insurers to identify vessels associated with illegal fishing and reduce insurance support for activities that undermine fish populations and marine ecosystems.
52. Unwrapping the Risks of Plastic Pollution to the Insurance Industry | UNEP Finance Initiative | UNEP FI | 2019
Examines physical, liability, regulatory, reputational, and investment risks created by plastic pollution and considers how insurers can encourage more sustainable materials and waste management.
53. Global Insurers Unite to Cut Financial Lifeline to Pirate Fishing | UNEP FI and Oceana | UNEP Finance Initiative | 6 October 2017
Describes an insurance-industry commitment to reduce coverage for vessels involved in illegal fishing, using access to insurance as leverage for marine conservation and improved fisheries governance.
54. Underwriting Our Planet | Deloitte and WWF | Deloitte | n.d.
Outlines actions insurers can take through underwriting to address the interconnected crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.
Insurance Institutions and Systemic Nature Risk
55. A LEAP for Nature: Advancing Nature-Related Financial Risk and Opportunity Assessment in Malaysia | Madelena Mohamed | Bank for International Settlements | 24 June 2026
Discusses financial-sector use of nature-risk assessment and the growing need to incorporate ecosystem dependencies into banking, investment, and insurance decisions.
56. Adaptation and Insurance: Strategies to Narrow the Protection Gap | Swiss Re Institute | Swiss Re | 2026
Examines how risk reduction, stronger adaptation, improved catastrophe models, and public-private insurance mechanisms can reduce escalating natural-hazard protection gaps.
57. Nature-Related Risk: Handbook for Financial Institutions | Climate Financial Risk Forum | Bank of England | October 2024
Provides financial institutions, including insurers, with guidance for identifying and incorporating nature-related risks into financial-risk management and scenario analysis.
58. Stakeholder Engagement on Biodiversity Loss Risk for Insurers | EIOPA | European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority | 10 June 2024
Reviews emerging insurer approaches to biodiversity loss and considers how nature-related exposures can be incorporated into risk management and solvency assessments.
59. Between Fear and Hope: A Possibilist View on the Role of Insurance in Combating Climate Change | EIOPA | European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority | 16 April 2024
Discusses catastrophe modeling, adaptation, insurance protection gaps, and growing regulatory attention to biodiversity loss and nature-related financial stability.
60. The Value of Insurance in a Changing Risk Landscape | Kai-Uwe Schanz | The Geneva Association | 21 November 2023
Examines changing insurability as climate and other systemic risks grow and emphasizes prevention, prediction, resilience, and services beyond traditional post-loss compensation.
61. Assessing Biodiversity-Related Financial Risks | OECD | OECD | 27 April 2023
Catalogues metrics, indicators, assessment methods, and financial-risk frameworks that can help insurers and regulators translate ecosystem degradation into financial exposure.
62. Climate Change & Environment Conference 2021 | The Geneva Association | The Geneva Association | 2021
Includes insurer discussions of biodiversity and environmental risk as core business issues and considers how nature-related exposures affect both underwriting and investments.
63. The Importance of Biodiversity to Avoid an Ecosystem Collapse | Swiss Re Institute | Swiss Re | 2021
Discusses incorporating biodiversity-promoting principles into underwriting and investment and highlights tools for assessing ecosystem-service dependency and risk.
64. Biodiversity and the Benefits for Human Health | Swiss Re Institute | Swiss Re | 2021
Connects biodiversity and green environments with health risks while considering insurance protection for green roofs, forestry, and other natural assets.
65. Underwriting Biodiversity and Ecosystem Risks | Swiss Re, UNEP FI and Partners | Swiss Re Institute | 3 June 2020
Examines biodiversity and ecosystem risks in insurance underwriting, including protected areas and World Heritage Sites, and discusses approaches for sustainable risk management.
66. Sustainability Risks in Underwriting | Swiss Re and UNEP FI | Swiss Re Institute | 3 June 2020
Addresses implementation of sustainability-risk frameworks in insurance and includes biodiversity, ecosystem protection, environmental risk, and protected areas within underwriting practice.
67. Why Managing Biodiversity Risk Is Critical for the Global Economy | Swiss Re Institute | Swiss Re | 2020
Introduces the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Index and explains how insurers could use ecosystem-condition data in risk selection, pricing, and product development.
Nature-Based Risk Reduction, Green Infrastructure and Resilience
68. Bringing Nature into the NFIP: Rewiring the National Flood Insurance Program Pricing and Models to Leverage Nature-Based Solutions | Talley Burley and Kelly Suttles | Environmental Defense Fund | 28 July 2026
Argues that wetlands, mangroves, rain gardens, and other natural defenses should be incorporated more explicitly into federal flood-risk models and insurance pricing because they can reduce losses while providing ecological benefits.
69. Advancing Nature-Based Insurance to Protect People and Nature | Megan A. Kelso et al. | Communications Earth & Environment | 23 June 2026
Identifies major frontiers for nature-based insurance, including improved catastrophe modeling, insurance pricing that recognizes ecosystem protection, insuring natural assets, and de-risking conservation investment.
70. Rethinking Nature Risk in Insurance: From Measurement to Forecast Performance | James d’Ath | NATURANCE | 3 February 2026
Argues that insurers need forward-looking, testable forecasts of ecosystem degradation rather than relying exclusively on static nature-risk indicators and qualitative assessments.
71. Nature for Insurance, and Insurance for Nature | NATURANCE Consortium | European Commission CORDIS | 27 October 2025
Reviews European research into insurance and investment mechanisms that integrate ecosystem services, disaster-risk financing, nature-based solutions, and biodiversity outcomes.
72. Parametric Insurance for Urban Green Zones | Multiple Authors | Sciety / Research Square | 2025
Tests satellite vegetation indices as parametric insurance triggers for mangroves, wetlands, parks, and other urban green infrastructure exposed to climate stress.
73. Insurance to Support Nature-Based Solutions: Opportunities and Constraints | T. Foreman, Jenan Irshaid et al. | WU Vienna | 2024
Develops a taxonomy of ways underwriting and investment can support nature-based solutions and highlights barriers to scaling insurer participation.
74. Rooted in Resilience: Innovations in Nature Insurance for Business | Marsh McLennan | Marsh | June 2023
Explores innovative insurance structures that recognize ecosystems as assets capable of reducing physical risk and considers ways insurance can help finance conservation and restoration.
75. Harnessing Nature’s Strengths for Addressing Water-Related Climate Risks | OECD | OECD | 2021
Reviews international experiences using nature-based water management and describes how insurance incentives and premium reductions could encourage investment in ecosystem-based risk reduction.
76. Mainstreaming Nature-Based Solutions Through Insurance: The Five “Hats” of the Insurance Sector | Elena Lopez-Gunn et al. | Elsevier | 2021
Presents a framework for understanding insurers as risk carriers, data providers, investors, innovators, and partners in financing and implementing nature-based resilience.
77. Insurance Value of Green Infrastructure in and Around Cities | Tom L. Green et al. | Ecosystems | 12 May 2016
Explores how urban parks, watersheds, gardens, and green infrastructure can buffer cities against climatic and ecological disturbances and reduce adaptation costs.
78. Incentivising Flood Risk Adaptation Through Risk-Based Insurance Premiums | Paul Hudson et al. | Ecological Economics | May 2016
Examines whether risk-based insurance pricing can motivate household flood adaptation while balancing the competing policy goal of maintaining affordable insurance.
79. Nature-Based Insurance Pilots | PIISA Consortium | PIISA | n.d.
Describes pilot projects exploring insurance solutions for green roofs, forests, wildfire resilience, and other nature-based adaptations intended to demonstrate how insurers can recognize ecosystem risk reduction.
Coral Reefs, Marine Ecosystems, Fisheries and Aquaculture
80. Coral Reef Insurance Triggered Following Hurricane Damage in Hawaiʻi | Howden Foundation | Howden Foundation | 24 August 2026
Describes the first triggering of Hawaiʻi's coral reef insurance policy and explains how rapid parametric payouts can finance reef assessment, repair, and restoration following hurricane damage.
81. Hurricane Lala Triggers Coral Reef Insurance Payout in Hawaii | Henry Gale | The Insurer | 24 August 2026
Reports on the first payout from Hawaiʻi's pioneering parametric coral reef insurance program and discusses the growing role of insurance in protecting natural assets.
82. Hawaii’s Coral Reefs Are Covered by Insurance. Hurricane Lala Triggered a Payout | Ben Gutierrez | Hawaii News Now | 21 August 2026
Explains how Hawaiʻi's reef insurance policy works and why rapid financing after storms may help reefs recover while maintaining coastal protection and other ecosystem services.
83. The Mesoamerican Reef Insurance Programme Enters Its Sixth Placement and Expands to Cover Two New Sites in Mexico | MAR Fund and Willis | MAR Fund | 16 July 2026
Describes expansion of a regional parametric reef insurance system that now provides rapid hurricane-response financing for twelve protected areas across the Mesoamerican Reef.
84. Building Coastal Resilience in Indonesia | UNDP | Sustainable Finance Hub | 24 June 2026
Reviews Indonesia's development of parametric coral reef insurance and the policy, financing, institutional, and community arrangements needed to integrate insurance into coastal resilience strategies.
85. Insurance for Coastal Resilience: Guidance and Toolkit from the Indonesia Coral Reef Insurance Project | UNDP Indonesia | United Nations Development Programme | 8 May 2026
Presents a six-step framework for assessing and implementing insurance solutions that deliver rapid post-disaster financing for coral reefs and coastal communities.
86. Indonesia Launches Practical Toolkit on Coral Reef Insurance | UNDP Indonesia | United Nations Development Programme | 8 May 2026
Describes Indonesia's effort to incorporate coral reef insurance into a broader coastal resilience and blue-economy strategy supporting ecosystems, tourism, fisheries, and coastal livelihoods.
87. Insuring the Reef: Governance and Risk for a Public Trust Resource in a Changing Climate | Michelle Harangody | Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space | 19 February 2026
Critically examines Hawaiʻi's coral reef insurance program, emphasizing questions of governance, public-trust resources, financialization, social equity, and ecological risk.
88. Feasibility Study of Scaling Coral Reef Insurance in the Maldives | UNDP Maldives and Maldives Monetary Authority | United Nations Development Programme | 1 July 2025
Assesses parametric insurance triggered by marine heatwaves as a mechanism for financing reef restoration and safeguarding ecosystem services central to the Maldives economy.
89. Coral Reef Insurance Project in Indonesia Passes Milestone | UNDP | United Nations Development Programme | 23 June 2025
Explains how Indonesia's Marine Biodiversity Trust and new regulatory framework could support insurance products financing coral reef protection and restoration.
90. Protecting Paradise: Enhancing Insurance Protection with Rapid Payment Systems | Samantha Cook, Helen Luskin Gradstein and Monzerrat Garcia | World Bank | 30 April 2025
Examines disaster-risk financing for Caribbean marine ecosystems and tourism, including faster insurance payments and financial mechanisms that support reef and mangrove protection.
91. Strengthening Climate Resilience: Feasibility Study on Parametric Coral Reef Insurance in the Maldives | UNDP Maldives | United Nations Development Programme | 5 February 2025
Describes research into temperature-triggered reef insurance designed to finance rapid conservation responses when marine heatwaves threaten Maldives coral ecosystems.
92. Parametric Insurance for Climate Adaptation in Fisheries and Aquaculture | Alistair J. Hobday et al. | Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries | 15 January 2025
Reviews parametric insurance applications for climate-sensitive fisheries and aquaculture, including products triggered by environmental conditions rather than conventional assessment of individual physical losses.
93. Hawai‘i’s Coral Reef Insurance Policy Renewed for 2025 | The Nature Conservancy | The Nature Conservancy | 2025
Details renewal of the first U.S. coral reef insurance policy and the development of an emergency restoration network capable of responding rapidly after qualifying storms.
94. Quantifying the Flood Risk Reduction of Coastal Nature-Based Solutions in the Caribbean | Darren Lumbroso et al. | Journal of Flood Risk Management | 2025
Quantifies how reefs and mangroves affect expected flood damages and considers how those risk reductions could be incorporated into traditional and parametric insurance products.
95. Risk Analysis and Insurance Solutions for Sustainable Marine Ranching in China | Swiss Re Institute | Swiss Re | 2025
Examines risks facing marine ranching and aquaculture operations and considers insurance solutions that can support more sustainable seafood production and resilient coastal economies.
96. Climate-Smart Aquaculture and Insurance in Ghana | Multiple Authors | Aquaculture | 25 February 2024
Examines climate-related risks facing aquaculture producers and the role insurance and climate-smart management practices can play in improving resilience and protecting aquatic livelihoods.
97. Major Upgrade to First U.S. Coral Reef Insurance Policy Increases Coverage | WTW and The Nature Conservancy | WTW | 14 February 2024
Describes expanded coverage for Hawaiʻi's parametric coral reef policy, allowing larger and more frequent payouts to finance rapid reef assessment and restoration following major storms.
98. Aquaculture Insurance for Small-Scale Producers | Food and Agriculture Organization | FAO | 2024
Reviews insurance opportunities for small-scale aquaculture producers exposed to disease, extreme weather, environmental change, and production losses and considers barriers to broader adoption.
99. Coral Reef Parametric Insurance Policy | LSE Grantham Research Institute | London School of Economics | 2024
Profiles a Fiji coral reef insurance initiative designed to release rapid restoration funding after tropical cyclones while strengthening protection for coastal ecosystems and communities.
100. Sustainable Finance for Asia and the Pacific: Protecting and Restoring Coral Reefs | Martha Rogers et al. | Asian Development Bank | December 2023
Reviews financial instruments capable of supporting coral reef conservation, including insurance and risk-financing mechanisms that can improve the resilience and investability of reef restoration.
101. Enhancing Resilience of Blue Foods to Climate Shocks Using Insurance | Alistair J. Hobday et al. | ICES Journal of Marine Science | 16 November 2023
Investigates how insurance could help fisheries and aquaculture businesses manage marine heatwaves, storms, and other climate shocks threatening seafood production and coastal livelihoods.
102. TNC Announces First-Ever U.S. Coral Reef Insurance Policy | The Nature Conservancy | The Nature Conservancy | 2022
Documents the launch of Hawaiʻi's reef insurance policy, designed to provide rapid funding for repair and restoration after damaging hurricanes and tropical storms.
103. The Value of U.S. Coral Reefs for Flood Risk Reduction | Borja G. Reguero et al. | Nature Sustainability | 15 April 2021
Quantifies the annual flood-protection benefits provided by U.S. coral reefs, establishing an economic basis for incorporating reef conservation into insurance, disaster-risk reduction, and infrastructure investment.
104. Insurance for Natural Infrastructure: Assessing the Feasibility of Insuring Coral Reefs in Florida and Hawai‘i | The Nature Conservancy | Conservation Gateway | 1 November 2020
Evaluates which reef hazards can be covered by parametric insurance and how insurance could provide reliable financing for rapid restoration of natural coastal defenses.
105. The Challenges of Extending Climate Risk Insurance to Fisheries | Nigel C. Sainsbury et al. | Nature Climate Change | 25 November 2019
Examines practical obstacles to applying climate insurance in fisheries, including limited data, mobile resources, ecological variability, basis risk, affordability, and governance challenges.
106. The Global Flood Protection Savings Provided by Coral Reefs | Michael W. Beck et al. | Nature Communications | 12 June 2018
Quantifies flood damages avoided because of coral reefs and estimates how reef degradation could increase coastal losses, providing a foundation for reef-related insurance and resilience finance.
107. Examining the Viability of Parametric Fisheries Insurance as a Tool for Conservation | emLab Researchers | University of California, Santa Barbara | n.d.
Investigates whether fisheries insurance can protect livelihoods during environmental shocks while incorporating incentives that reduce pressure on fish stocks and support long-term ecosystem conservation.
108. Insurance and Risk Management in Fisheries | Food and Agriculture Organization | FAO | n.d.
Provides information on insurance as part of fisheries risk management, including protection for vessels, crews, equipment, and livelihoods operating within highly variable marine environments.
109. Coastal Resilience Methodology | The Nature Conservancy | The Nature Conservancy | n.d.
Describes approaches for quantifying coastal resilience benefits from conservation and restoration, helping create financial incentives and credits tied to mangroves and other coastal ecosystems.
Wetlands, Mangroves, Floodplains and Urban Natural Infrastructure
110. Working With Nature Pays Off: UGA Study Finds Natural Infrastructure Delivers Returns of Up to 8-to-1 | Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems | University of Georgia | 16 June 2026
Reviews economic evidence for natural infrastructure including wetlands and floodplains and shows how avoided disaster losses and ecosystem services can generate substantial returns on resilience investment.
111. Living Shoreline Aims to Mitigate Flooding, Erosion in Lewes, Delaware | Zoë Read | WHYY | 4 June 2026
Examines a coastal living-shoreline project intended to reduce erosion and flooding while restoring habitat, illustrating the type of natural infrastructure capable of reducing insured property losses.
112. The Economic Value of Wetlands in Reducing Riverine Flood Losses in the USA | Jesse D. Gourevitch, Adam C. Gold and Helena M. Garcia | Nature Water | 1 June 2026
Uses decades of flood-insurance claims and wetland data to estimate the protective value of wetlands, finding that wetland loss substantially increased insured residential flood damages across the United States.
113. New Study Shows Wetlands Loss Has Increased Residential Flood Insurance Claim Payments by $10 Billion | Environmental Defense Fund | EDF | 1 June 2026
Summarizes research linking upstream wetland destruction with approximately $10.1 billion in additional U.S. flood-insurance payments and highlights conservation as a financially measurable flood-risk strategy.
114. An Interdisciplinary Overview of Levee Setback Benefits Supporting Spatial Planning | Charles B. van Rees et al. | U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center | 22 April 2026
Reviews how setting levees farther from rivers can restore floodplains, reduce flood hazards, improve habitat, and generate ecosystem-service benefits relevant to risk and insurance analysis.
115. Does Urban Green Infrastructure Lead to Equity Issues for Flood Vulnerable Areas? | Kejing Zhou et al. | Cities | July 2025
Examines distributional effects of urban green infrastructure used for flood management, emphasizing the need to consider who receives protection and who bears costs when ecosystem-based adaptation is implemented.
116. Natural Habitats Can Reduce Flood Losses | Anna Retsa and Gillian Rutherford-Liske | Swiss Re Institute | 12 February 2025
Uses U.S. flood-claim data and biodiversity information to examine how coral reefs, mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass can reduce insured flood losses.
117. The Role of Insurers in Flood Risk Management Revisited from a Sustainability Perspective | Stricker | Risk Management and Insurance Review | 2025
Reconsiders insurers as participants in flood prevention and adaptation rather than solely loss compensators and evaluates ways insurance can encourage more sustainable resilience investments.
118. Nature-Based Solutions for Flood Management in Asia and the Pacific | Kensuke Molnar-Tanaka and Swenja Surminski | OECD | 22 March 2024
Reviews ecosystem-based flood management and discusses insurance and investment mechanisms capable of recognizing and financing the risk-reduction benefits of natural infrastructure.
119. Protecting Paradise: Opportunities for Insurance to Support Marine-Based and Coastal Tourism in the Caribbean | World Bank | World Bank | 2024
Explores insurance opportunities for coral reefs, mangroves, tourism businesses, and coastal economies whose resilience depends heavily on functioning marine ecosystems.
120. Modeling Flood Protection Services of Levee Setbacks, a Nature-Based Solution | Matt Chambers et al. | Journal of Hydrology | 2024
Models the flood-reduction services generated by reconnecting rivers with floodplains and demonstrates how ecological restoration can create measurable hazard-protection benefits.
121. Connected Urban Green Spaces for Pluvial Flood Risk Reduction | Multiple Authors | Sustainable Cities and Society | 2024
Evaluates networks of urban green spaces as tools for managing intense rainfall and surface flooding, with implications for avoided property damage and insurance losses.
122. Nature-Based Solutions for Leveed River Corridors | Matthew L. Chambers et al. | Anthropocene | December 2023
Reviews floodplain restoration, levee setbacks, and other nature-based approaches for reducing flood hazards while reconnecting river ecosystems and recovering ecological functions.
123. Nature-Based Flood Solutions and the National Flood Insurance Program | Denise Reed and Leonard Shabman | Resources for the Future | 18 July 2022
Examines whether federal flood insurance policies and risk models adequately recognize wetlands and other natural defenses that can reduce flood damages.
124. Coastal Natural and Nature-Based Features: International Guidelines for Flood Risk Management | Todd S. Bridges et al. | Frontiers in Built Environment | 11 May 2022
Presents international guidance for using dunes, wetlands, reefs, beaches, islands, and hybrid infrastructure in coastal flood-risk management and resilience planning.
125. Wetlands, Flooding, and the Clean Water Act | Charles Taylor and Hannah Druckenmiller | American Economic Review | April 2022
Uses changes in federal wetland protection to estimate the flood-damage consequences of wetland loss, providing economic evidence for the protective ecosystem services wetlands deliver.
126. Improving Flood Resilience Through Insurance and Nature-Based Mitigation | The Nature Conservancy | The Nature Conservancy | 2021
Explores ways flood insurance policy, pricing, mitigation incentives, and ecosystem restoration could work together to encourage greater investment in nature-based flood protection.
127. Reducing Caribbean Risk: Opportunities for Cost-Effective Mangrove Restoration and Insurance | The Nature Conservancy and AXA XL | AXA XL | 2021
Analyzes locations where mangrove restoration can cost-effectively reduce storm losses and investigates insurance mechanisms capable of protecting and financing these coastal ecosystems.
128. The Global Flood Protection Benefits of Mangroves | Pelayo Menéndez et al. | Scientific Reports | 10 March 2020
Estimates the people and property protected from coastal flooding by mangroves worldwide and shows how mangrove loss can translate directly into greater economic and disaster risk.
129. Financing Coastal Resilience by Combining Nature-Based Risk Reduction with Insurance | Borja G. Reguero et al. | Ecological Economics | March 2020
Proposes combining ecosystem restoration with insurance savings so that lower expected losses and premiums can help finance coastal nature-based risk-reduction projects.
130. The Value of Coastal Wetlands for Flood Damage Reduction in the Northeastern USA | Siddharth Narayan et al. | Scientific Reports | 2017
Quantifies the avoided property damages generated by coastal wetlands during major storms, providing evidence that ecosystems function as economically valuable natural flood defenses.
131. Could Insuring Mangroves Protect Coastal Communities? | The Nature Conservancy | The Nature Conservancy | n.d.
Explores parametric insurance for mangrove restoration and identifies locations where protecting mangrove forests could provide substantial coastal-risk and biodiversity benefits.
132. San Crisanto Mangrove Forest Resilience Insurance | LSE Grantham Research Institute | London School of Economics | n.d.
Profiles development of insurance for a community-managed mangrove forest in Mexico, where rapid post-disaster financing could help restore a natural asset that protects coastlines and livelihoods.
Forests, Wildfire and Ecosystem Restoration
133. Nature Finance | Action on Climate Team | Simon Fraser University | June 2026
Reviews financial structures for ecosystem restoration and resilience, including the Forest Resilience Bond and approaches that monetize avoided disaster losses and ecosystem services.
134. Mobilising Investments in Nature Restoration Through Innovative Financial Solutions and Geospatial Analytics | European Research Consortium | European Commission CORDIS | 2026
Describes research developing financial mechanisms for ecosystem restoration, including prototypes involving biodiversity insurance and tools designed to reduce investment risk in regenerative land management.
135. International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration, Third Edition | George D. Gann et al. | Restoration Ecology | 2026
Establishes international standards for credible ecological restoration and discusses the growing ecosystem of finance and risk-management mechanisms supporting large-scale restoration practice.
136. The Business Case for Insuring Forests in Urban Areas | Aiyana Moya | University of California, Santa Cruz | 19 December 2025
Explores whether urban forests themselves can be insured against storms and other damaging events by quantifying tree replacement costs and the economic value of ecosystem services.
137. SCOR Innovation Days: Insuring Nature's Resilience | SCOR | SCOR | 1 July 2025
Discusses emerging reinsurance approaches for climate resilience and nature restoration, including products capable of supporting ecosystem recovery and reducing environmental investment risks.
138. Wildfire Resilience Insurance: Insurance Which Accounts for the Risk Reduction of Forest Management | Dave Jones | UC Berkeley CLEE / World Bank Conference | June 2025
Shows how insurance pricing can recognize wildfire-risk reductions produced by ecological forest management such as thinning and prescribed fire.
139. Wildfire Risk Reduction in a Changing Climate | Anna Retsa et al. | Swiss Re | 26 May 2025
Reviews worsening wildfire hazards and highlights prevention and resilience measures, including ecosystem and forest-management interventions that can reduce losses and support continued insurability.
140. First Ever Wildfire Resilience Insurance Policy Written and Placed | Dave Jones et al. | UC Berkeley Center for Law, Energy & the Environment | April 2025
Documents a policy designed to recognize reduced wildfire exposure from forest-health treatments, demonstrating a potential link between restoration investment and insurance affordability.
141. Risk Reduction From Forest Management Accounted For in First-Of-Its-Kind Wildfire Resilience Insurance | The Nature Conservancy, Willis and UC Berkeley | Conservation Gateway | 1 January 2025
Presents analytics demonstrating how ecological forest restoration can be incorporated into wildfire insurance underwriting and pricing.
142. TNC and Willis Launch Wildfire Resilience Insurance | The Nature Conservancy | The Nature Conservancy | 2025
Describes insurance coverage for a California community where forest thinning and prescribed fire materially reduced modeled wildfire risk, premiums, and deductibles.
143. Linking Forest Treatment to Insurance Benefits by Reducing Wildfire Risk | The Nature Conservancy | The Nature Conservancy | 2025
Discusses efforts to create a financial feedback loop in which wildfire-loss reductions and insurance savings help support additional forest restoration.
144. 2025 Science, Practice, and Policy Highlights | Society for Ecological Restoration | SER | 2025
Reviews developments in ecological restoration science and policy, including greater attention to finance, risk-sharing, standards, and mechanisms capable of scaling ecosystem restoration.
145. SER's 2024 Restoration Policy Update | Society for Ecological Restoration | SER | 2024
Reviews policy developments affecting ecosystem restoration finance, standards, biodiversity recovery, climate adaptation, and the institutional environment in which insurance-backed restoration could expand.
146. Nature-Based Solutions for Wildfire Risk Management: The Role of Insurance | Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer et al. | IIASA / EGU | 2023
Explores how insurance can complement ecological wildfire interventions, including forest management and nature-based risk reduction, by translating lower hazard exposure into financial incentives.
147. Role of Insurance in Wildfire Risk Mitigation | Multiple Authors | Economic Modelling | March 2022
Evaluates whether insurance effectively influences behavior in wildfire-prone areas and considers the limitations of conventional insurance as a risk-mitigation mechanism.
148. Wildfire Resilience Insurance: Summary of Insights | The Nature Conservancy and Willis Towers Watson | The Nature Conservancy | 27 June 2021
Summarizes modeling showing that thinning and prescribed burning can substantially reduce catastrophic fire exposure and generate measurable insurance benefits.
149. Wildfire Resilience Insurance: Quantifying the Risk Reduction of Ecological Forestry with Insurance | The Nature Conservancy and Willis Towers Watson | Science for Conservation | 2021
Quantifies how ecological forestry can reduce expected wildfire losses and explores using insurance savings to increase investment in forest restoration.
150. Recognizing the Insurance Value of Resilience: Evidence from Forest Restoration Policy in the Southeastern United States | Sophia Tanner et al. | Journal of Environmental Management | 2021
Investigates how forest restoration and ecosystem resilience generate insurance-like benefits by reducing vulnerability to environmental disturbances and stabilizing ecosystem-service provision.
151. Determining the Insurance Value of Ecosystems: A Discrete Choice Study on Natural Hazard Protection by Forests | Christian Unterberger and Roland Olschewski | Ecological Economics | 2021
Uses stated preferences to estimate how people value forests for protection against natural hazards, translating ecosystem resilience into an economic insurance-value framework.
152. Mother Nature Has the Answer | Michael Menhart | Munich Re | 21 September 2020
Discusses natural ecosystems as protective infrastructure and argues that insurers have an economic interest in conservation because healthy ecosystems can reduce catastrophe losses.
153. On Insurance as a Tool for Securing Forest Restoration After Wildfires | Multiple Authors | Forest Policy and Economics | May 2014
Evaluates forest insurance designed to cover post-fire restoration costs, linking financial protection directly to recovery of forest ecosystems and their services.
154. Insurance: A New Frontier for Conservation | The Nature Conservancy | The Nature Conservancy | n.d.
Explains how insurance pricing and premium savings could create new economic incentives for ecological forestry and landscape-scale wildfire resilience.
155. Insuring Urban Forests | Insurance for Good | Insurance for Good | n.d.
Highlights emerging efforts to insure urban trees and other natural assets and discusses how insurance could help communities finance restoration after storms, fire, or other disasters.
156. Nature Restoration & Conservation Insurance Initiative | SCOR | SCOR | n.d.
Describes the NatReCo initiative, which seeks insurance solutions for ecological restoration projects and addresses risks that can prevent private capital from investing in long-term ecosystem recovery.
157. Restoration Insurance Service Company | RISCO | Restoration Finance | n.d.
Presents a financing model that combines ecosystem restoration, particularly mangroves, with insurance and investment structures intended to make conservation projects more attractive to private capital.
Agriculture, Soil Biodiversity, Rangelands and Human-Wildlife Insurance
158. Scaling Up Crop Insurance in Africa for Climate Resilience and Agricultural Transformation | Ruth Hill and Berber Kramer | CGIAR | 10 March 2026
Reviews opportunities to expand agricultural insurance in Africa and considers how improved risk protection can increase farmers' capacity to adapt to drought, rainfall variability, and climate change.
159. Eliciting Farmer Households' Preferences for Attributes of Insurance Schemes Addressing Wildlife Conflict | Multiple Authors | Environmental Impact Assessment Review | July 2025
Examines farmer demand for wildlife-conflict insurance and how premiums, payout speed, conservation requirements, and other design features influence participation.
160. Weather Index Insurance, Agricultural Productivity, and Multiscale Resilience | Multiple Authors | Journal of Environmental Management | 2025
Studies weather-index insurance among Kenyan farmers and how financial risk transfer interacts with agricultural inputs, weather shocks, productivity, and resilience.
161. Index Insurance for Forage, Pasture, and Rangeland: A Review of Experiences in the USA, Canada, Kenya, and Ethiopia | Multiple Authors | Sustainability | 2024
Reviews index-based insurance programs for grazing systems and examines their performance as tools for protecting pastoral livelihoods during drought while managing extensive rangeland resources.
162. Insurance to Promote Human-Wildlife Coexistence: A How to Guide | IIED, AB Entheos et al. | International Institute for Environment and Development | September 2023
Provides guidance for governments, insurers, and conservation organizations designing insurance programs that compensate wildlife losses while encouraging human-wildlife coexistence.
163. Crop Insurance, Land Productivity and the Environment: A Way Forward to Better Understanding | Multiple Authors | Agriculture | 2021
Reviews relationships among crop insurance, production decisions, land-use intensity, environmental outcomes, and agricultural sustainability and identifies important areas for further research.
164. Crop Insurance: A Barrier to Conservation Adoption? | Multiple Authors | Journal of Environmental Management | 15 December 2020
Investigates whether agricultural insurance changes farmer incentives to adopt soil, water, and land conservation measures, highlighting possible interactions between financial insurance and ecological risk reduction.
165. Natural Insurance as Condition for Market Insurance: Climate Change Adaptation in Agriculture | Sisse Liv Jørgensen, Mette Termansen and Unai Pascual | Ecological Economics | March 2020
Explores insurance contracts in which farmers must adopt soil-sustainability practices, linking commercial insurance eligibility with ecosystem-based adaptation.
166. Insurance and Human Wildlife Conflict | Paul Steele | World Bank | 12 November 2019
Reviews insurance approaches that compensate communities for losses caused by wildlife while supporting conservation and reducing incentives for retaliatory killing.
167. Human–Wildlife Conflict and Insurance: Can Insurance Reduce the Costs of Living with Wildlife? | Olivia Wilson-Holt and Paul Steele | IIED | March 2019
Reviews wildlife-loss insurance and microinsurance schemes in Kenya and Sri Lanka, focusing on verification, timely compensation, prevention incentives, and financial sustainability.
168. Index Insurance and Climate Risk Management: Addressing Social Equity | Multiple Authors | Development Policy Review | 2019
Examines equity issues surrounding agricultural index insurance and considers whether products adequately protect poorer households exposed to climate and ecosystem variability.
169. Adaptation to Climate Change in Rainfed Agriculture in the Global South: Soil Biodiversity as Natural Insurance | Yoro Sidibé et al. | Ecological Economics | April 2018
Models soil biodiversity as natural insurance that can stabilize agricultural productivity and help drought-exposed farmers adapt to increasing climatic variability.
170. Conservation Compliance: How Farmer Incentives Are Changing in the Crop Insurance Era | Roger Claassen et al. | USDA Economic Research Service | 27 July 2017
Examines U.S. policies linking access to subsidized crop insurance with conservation requirements intended to reduce soil erosion and protect wetlands on agricultural land.
171. On the Value of Soil Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services | Unai Pascual et al. | Ecosystem Services | October 2015
Develops a framework distinguishing the productive value and natural-insurance value of soil biodiversity and connects both with agricultural management and policy.
172. Developing a Spatially-Explicit, Sustainable and Risk-Based Insurance Scheme to Mitigate Human–Wildlife Conflict | Multiple Authors | Biological Conservation | December 2013
Develops a risk-based insurance model for elephant damage to crops and examines how insurance can compensate farmers while supporting wildlife conservation.
173. Index Insurance for Pro-Poor Biodiversity Conservation | Multiple Authors | Cornell University | 2010
Explores an innovative index-insurance approach for biodiversity conservation in Thailand, investigating whether financial protection can encourage communities to participate in conservation while reducing livelihood risks.
174. Agro-Biodiversity as Natural Insurance and the Development of Financial Insurance Markets | Stefan Baumgärtner and Martin F. Quaas | Leuphana University | 12 September 2007
Explores how on-farm biodiversity provides natural insurance to risk-averse farmers and how access to commercial insurance can affect incentives to maintain agricultural biodiversity.
175. Index-Based Insurance | CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security | CGIAR | n.d.
Reviews index insurance as a climate-risk tool for smallholder farmers and pastoralists, including weather and vegetation triggers designed to deliver faster payouts following drought and other shocks.
176. Index-Based Livestock Insurance | International Livestock Research Institute | ILRI | n.d.
Describes livestock insurance using satellite indicators of forage conditions to compensate pastoral households during severe drought, linking remote sensing, rangeland conditions, and financial resilience.
177. International Livestock Research Institute – Kenya | Global Index Insurance Facility and ILRI | Index Insurance Forum | n.d.
Profiles Kenya's index-based livestock insurance program and its use of remotely measured vegetation conditions to protect pastoral households against drought-related livestock losses.
178. Drought Risk Insurance and Sustainable Land Management: Options for Integration? | Multiple Authors | Elsevier | n.d.
Explores whether drought insurance can be designed alongside sustainable land-management practices so that financial risk transfer supports rather than substitutes for ecological adaptation.
Ecosystem Insurance Value and Natural Assurance
179. A Systematic Review of Nature-Positive Climate Risk Transfer and Financing Instruments | Multiple Authors | Communications Earth & Environment | 2026
Reviews ecosystem insurance, nature-positive resilience insurance, risk-transfer instruments, reef insurance, and related mechanisms that combine conservation with climate adaptation finance.
180. Natural Insurance as a Green Alternative for Farmers? | Jérôme Faure and Lauriane Mouysset | Ecological Economics | January 2025
Estimates the insurance value provided by semi-natural grasslands through pest-control ecosystem services and compares biological risk reduction with pesticides and conventional financial insurance.
181. Insurance and the Natural Assurance Value of Ecosystems in Risk Prevention and Reduction | Roxane Marchal et al. | Springer | 5 May 2023
Explains the protective or “assurance” value ecosystems provide against hazards and describes insurers as risk modelers, investors, innovators, partners, and providers of preventive services.
182. Concepts in Water Security, Natural Assurance Schemes and Nature-Based Solutions | Peter van der Keur et al. | Springer | 5 May 2023
Introduces the concept of natural assurance schemes and explains how ecosystems and nature-based solutions can reduce water-related risks while creating economic value analogous to conventional insurance.
183. Looking into the Future: Natural Assurance Schemes for Resilience | Multiple Authors | Springer | 5 May 2023
Examines future applications of natural assurance schemes and considers how ecosystem restoration, insurance, investment, governance, and public policy could be combined to scale nature-based resilience.
184. Insurance Value of Biodiversity in the Anthropocene Is the Full Resilience Value | Multiple Authors | Ecological Economics | 2023
Reconsiders competing definitions of ecosystem insurance value and argues for linking biodiversity's insurance role more explicitly with ecological and social resilience.
185. Insurance Value of Ecosystems: An Introduction | Eeva Primmer and Jouni Paavola | Ecological Economics | June 2021
Introduces theoretical, empirical, and policy approaches to ecosystem insurance value and examines conservation, sustainable use, restoration, and governance as ways to maintain that value.
186. Biodiversity as Insurance: From Concept to Measurement and Application | Multiple Authors | Biological Reviews | 2021
Reviews decades of research on biodiversity's ability to stabilize ecosystem functioning and applies biological-insurance concepts to agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and ecosystem management.
187. The Natural Assurance Value of Nature-Based Solutions: A Layered Institutional Analysis | Multiple Authors | Ecological Economics | 2021
Examines the conditions under which nature-based solutions generate reliable risk-reduction benefits and how institutions can maintain the ecosystem functions underlying this natural assurance value.
188. Nature Insurance Value: Assessment and Demonstration – Project Reporting | NAIAD Consortium | European Commission CORDIS | 2021
Summarizes research demonstrating how restored ecosystems can reduce floods and drought impacts and how their risk-reduction benefits might be converted into investable and insurable value.
189. Nature Insurance Value: Assessment and Demonstration | European Environment Agency | Climate-ADAPT | 7 October 2020
Describes European demonstration projects evaluating nature-based solutions as risk-management infrastructure and developing financial approaches that recognize their insurance and resilience value.
190. Taking Stock of the Empirical Evidence on the Insurance Value of Ecosystems | Martin Dallimer et al. | Ecological Economics | January 2020
Reviews empirical attempts to measure how ecosystems buffer societies against hazards and uncertainty and identifies methodological gaps limiting mainstream application.
191. Insurance Value of Natural Capital | Martin Quaas, Stefan Baumgärtner and Michel De Lara | Ecological Economics | November 2019
Develops an economic model showing how natural capital can reduce uncertainty in ecosystem-service provision and therefore possess measurable insurance value.
192. Governing the Provision of Insurance Value from Ecosystems | Jouni Paavola and Eeva Primmer | Ecological Economics | October 2019
Examines institutions and governance arrangements required to preserve the insurance value ecosystems provide and emphasizes collective-action challenges associated with managing ecological resilience.
193. The Portfolio Effect: Where Diversity Matters in Marine Fisheries | NOAA Fisheries | NOAA | 3 October 2018
Explains how diversity among fish populations can stabilize fisheries much like a diversified financial portfolio, reducing variability in ecological productivity and fishing opportunities.
194. Quantifying Effects of Biodiversity on Ecosystem Functioning Across Times and Places | Forest Isbell et al. | Ecology Letters | June 2018
Shows how biodiversity helps maintain ecosystem functioning under different environmental conditions across space and time, strengthening the empirical foundation for biodiversity's ecological insurance role.
195. NAIAD – Nature Insurance Value: Assessment and Demonstration | NAIAD Consortium | European Commission CORDIS | 2016
Profiles a major European research project created to develop methods for assessing the insurance value of ecosystems and nature-based solutions for water-related hazards.
196. Biodiversity, Productivity, and the Spatial Insurance Hypothesis Revisited | Multiple Authors | Journal of Theoretical Biology | 2015
Examines how spatial heterogeneity, dispersal, biodiversity, and environmental variability interact to stabilize ecosystem productivity across landscapes.
197. The Economic Insurance Value of Ecosystem Resilience | Stefan Baumgärtner and Sebastian Strunz | Ecological Economics | May 2014
Develops an economic framework for valuing ecosystem resilience as insurance against uncertainty in future ecosystem-service provision and environmental conditions.
198. The Insurance Value of Biodiversity in the Provision of Ecosystem Services | Stefan Baumgärtner | Natural Resource Modeling | 28 June 2008
Develops an ecological-economic model in which biodiversity provides natural insurance against uncertain ecosystem-service delivery and may substitute partly for market insurance.
199. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Productivity in a Fluctuating Environment: The Insurance Hypothesis | Akira Yachi and Michel Loreau | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 1999
Establishes the influential insurance hypothesis that greater biodiversity can stabilize ecosystem functioning because species respond differently to environmental fluctuations.
