Fast and reliable access to financing is a central element of a comprehensive climate risk management approach. In developing countries and emerging economies, however, financial tools such as insurance are often inaccessible and unaffordable for households, businesses and governments.

This is why, in 2015, the InsuResilience Initiative was launched during Germany’s G7 Presidency. Two years later, at the 2017 UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, the initiative was expanded into the InsuResilience Global Partnership, bringing together representatives of G20 and V20 (the Vulnerable Twenty Group) nations as well as from international organisations, the private sector, civil society and academia.

The partnership promoted the roll-out of climate and disaster risk finance and insurance (CDRFI) mechanisms in developing countries and emerging economies to increase the financial resilience of poor and vulnerable people. To achieve this goal, the partnership built a multi-stakeholder community of policymakers, practitioners and experts to share lessons learnt, build evidence and coordinate global action.

With its six-year work plan, Vision 2025, the partnership developed one of the most comprehensive frameworks for tracking public and private funding for climate resilience at the time. Through the concerted efforts of partnership members, an estimated 402 million people were financially protected against climate risks in 2025.

Throughout its workstreams, the partnership placed particular emphasis on addressing gender-specific barriers to financial protection. The Centre of Excellence on Gender-smart Solutions was launched under the gender workstream of the InsuResilience Global Partnership to provide guidance, tools and expertise to design and implement gender-responsive climate and disaster risk financing mechanisms.

The work of InsuResilience laid the foundation for the establishment of the Global Shield against Climate Risks in 2022, which strongly builds on the expertise, networks and mechanisms developed under the partnership. To learn more about the extensive knowledge and guidance material developed under the InsuResilience Global Partnership and the Centre of Excellence on Gender-smart Solutions, have a look at this product landscape.

Persistent gender gaps continue to shape who can access and benefit from Climate and Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance (CDRFI). Many CDRFI instruments rely on data, eligibility criteria, and delivery channels that do not account for women’s risk exposure or access constraints. As a result, financial protection mechanisms often fail to reach those most affected by climate shocks.

The Centre of Excellence on Gender-Smart Solutions was launched at COP26 in Glasgow, under the gender workstream of the InsuResilience Global Partnership, to provide structured guidance and practical tools for the systematic integration of gender considerations into CDRFI policies, programmes, and product design.

The Centre of Excellence generates evidence and provides practical guidance to strengthen the CDRFI ecosystem. It aims to bridge research and implementation gaps by translating global evidence and lessons learned into actionable insights for practitioners. Through its advisory services, toolkits, and knowledge products, the Centre supports governments, development partners and private sector actors in designing and delivering inclusive CDRFI policies, programmes, and financial instruments.

Its resources guide stakeholders to identify systemic gaps, address gender and social inclusion gaps, and adapt CDRFI approaches to better strengthen the resilience of women and underserved groups.

Learn more about the Centre of Excellence here.

The Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) in Ghana experiences perennial rain events on an almost annual basis. This heavy rainfall causes significant economic and physical losses to the Accra region.

Developing an appropriate insurance product is thus vital in coping with these flood risk damages. It is one of the key parts of the integrated flood risk management project in GAMA — a joint develoPPP.de project by GIZ and Allianz Reinsurance. As a part of this project, an indemnity-based flood cover for three municipalities has been designed. It covers the aggregated losses of all insured assets managed by a municipality that are hit by a severe single flood event. The design of this product can be easily adapted to different municipality’s needs, if sufficient portfolio and loss data as well as the willingness to invest in risk reduction and preparedness activities are available.

Design of a Flood Cover Insurance for Public Assets in Ghana

SMEs in Morocco are vulnerable to a broad range of extreme weather events such as floods, severe rainfalls, heatwaves and droughts, which become more frequent in warmer climate conditions.

The joint develoPPP.de project by GIZ and Allianz Reinsurance developed integrated solutions for the management of climate risks, including prevention measures and risk transfer solutions, and enabled SMEs to reduce their overall risk exposure. The industrial zone in Aït Melloul was selected as a pilot zone for the project due to its historical exposure to flash floods which have caused significant financial losses. This industrial zone hosts approximately 300 enterprises, most of which are SMEs operating in the food processing industry.

Developing Climate Risk Management Approaches for SMEs in Morocco

Climate change contributes to increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events, causing economic downturns, and reducing food security and socioeconomic stability in climate vulnerable countries like Thailand and Egypt. Estimating climate and disaster risks and their impacts on macroeconomic (e.g., GDP, employment) as well as non-monetary indicators (e.g., access to health, education and mobility) still faces various challenges, making comprehensive strategies for (financial) protection against these risks difficult.

The aim of the ERA project is to provide the government partners in Thailand and Egypt with an enhanced risk assessment for the development of climate change adaptation and, subsequently, climate and disaster risk financing strategies. The activities of this project include a comprehensive risk analysis for specific sectors and populations, identifying adaptation measures and advising on risk retention and transfer instruments.

Enhancing Risk Assessments (ERA) for Improved Country Risk Financing Strategies

The bilateral GIZ project FortaleceRES aims at strengthening the resilience of the vulnerable rural population in Eastern Paraguay with a focus on the two districts of Caazapá and Caaguazú.

The agricultural sector is a key segment of the Paraguayan economy, representing 30% of gross domestic product, 40% of exports, and the source of employment for a large majority of the rural population. Due to the country’s subtropical temperate climate, characterized by a rainy season in summer and a dry season in winter, it is exposed to harsh impacts of climate change. FortaleceRES is working with political key actors on the national and regional levels, strengthening economic resilience by creating non-agricultural income opportunities, building environmental resilience by promoting soil conservation and fertility measures, as well as reducing social vulnerability through an increased access to insurance products.

Strengthening the resilience of the vulnerable rural population

The last two decades saw a surge in policy interventions, innovative technologies, and new institutional approaches that spurred the growth of agricultural insurance programs in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where millions of smallholder farmers do not have a financial safety net.

For more than 30 years, GIZ has been working with its partners on inclusive agricultural insurance projects around the world, from regulation and implementation to financial literacy and market development. GIZ has thus conducted a first stocktaking and analysis of this development in 2016 and repeated the exercise in 2020/2021. This report provides an update of the state of agricultural insurance in these countries, as well as the policies, technologies, and innovations currently shaping it.

Innovations and emerging trends in agricultural insurance for smallholder farmers – an update

The Inclusive Insurance Factsheet Series, developed by the “Global Initiative for Access to Insurance”, hosted by GIZ, highlights how insurance as a tool contributes towards meeting the needs of vulnerable individuals, households and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in developing countries and emerging economies.

This factsheet explains how parametric insurance and the different types of extreme weather insurance work, it presents examples on existing insurance solutions and recommends areas of intervention for international development cooperation.

Managing Climate Risk with Extreme Weather Insurance – Inclusive Insurance Factsheet