The (Re)Insurance Industry’s Roles in the Integration of Nature-based Solutions for Prevention in Disaster Risk Reduction—Insights from a European Survey

Abstract

The insurance and reinsurance sector is normally treated as a payer of last resort in disaster risk reduction. This paper starts from a different question: what roles can the sector actually play in the integration of Nature Based Solutions for prevention, and which of those roles is it already playing?

Answers were collected through a European survey of insurance systems carried out across the NAIAD test countries, deliberately covering markets with contrasting arrangements — the French natural catastrophe compensation scheme, the Anglo-Saxon model, and the Nordic and Central European variants. The survey examined how each system distributes risk between the state, the market and the insured, what scope each leaves for prevention expenditure, and how each treats the risk-reduction contribution of ecosystems.

The paper organises the findings into a set of distinct roles, from innovator and investor to partner in public-private arrangements, provider of risk data, and reinsurer of other exposed actors. Making the roles explicit matters because the entry points for Nature Based Solutions differ sharply between them, and because a sector that is structurally aligned with the state on flood risk has a direct incentive to invest in measures that reduce claims.