During the ClimateEurope2 festival, which took place in Venice on 11-13 of March, 2024, Stefano Ceolotto (CMCC) moderated the World Café session on “Climate risk insurance gap and innovation potential”. In this occasion, Ceolotto presented the NATURANCE project too.

The extremely insightful conversation with the sessions’ participants took off from a discussion on the importance of insurance to alleviate the economic and social impacts of climatic events and to the challenges that climate change poses to the provision of effective and affordable insurance products.

It then moved to the current state of climate risk insurance in Europe, highlighting some of the most important causes for the limited penetration as well as some potential solutions to close the gap. Among these, participants delved into the role of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to provide insurance value and foster resilience.

The conversation shared views on the fact that insurance companies should incentivise their implementation, for example through premium reductions or otherwise more favourable policy conditions, or even directly finance them, for instance with the prospect of better environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings.

Participants also mentioned certain downsides and limitations which warrant further careful consideration by academics and policy-makers.

Among these are the fact that in certain cases NbS can introduce new sources of risk, as in the case of green roofs on hybrid vehicles’ charging stations; or that their effectiveness is greatly reduced if long-term monitoring and maintenance after the official end of the project are not ensured.