Climate insurance solutions workshop held for industry professionals in Sri Lanka

Experts in remote sensing shared the latest innovations in digital data with insurance professionals at a virtual training workshop held recently. This new knowledge will enable insurers to build better products that help more farmers in Sri Lanka cope with climate risk.

Most Sri Lankan farmers are smallholders and have faced incessant onslaughts of floods and droughts, which have destroyed crops and assets and forced them to compensate by borrowing at high interest rates they are rarely able to pay back. This has led to spiraling cycles of poverty and suicide in farmer communities. Such events have impacted poverty levels and food security of the nation, and call for timely and effective adaptation policies that enable rural households to combat weather extremes.

Giriraj Amarnath, Principal Researcher – Disaster Risk Management and Climate Resilience and Research Group Lead: Water Risks and Disasters, International Water Management Institute (IWMI), opened the training session by explaining that satellite data is an…

Photo Credit: Hamish John Appleby/IWMI