Insuring against future climate change: the use of mandatory catastrophe risk insurance and microinsurance to promote mitigation and adaptation

This thesis examines the potential of insurance to reduce greenhouse house gas emissions and help societies to equitably adapt to predicted gradual and catastrophic climate change impacts. The paper explores how insurance might operate as a mitigation and adaptation tool for states and enterprises with high-coping capacities and proposes a new insurance product: climate change catastrophe risk insurance. As explained in the paper, the proposed catastrophe risk insurance would further the goals of implementing the polluter pays principle in the context of climate change. The paper also examines how insurance might be used as an adaptation tool for vulnerable groups and individuals with low-coping capacities and proposes a regionally distributed microinsurance product to be funded by proposed national or global carbon taxes.