The terrible fires in California are yet another example of the destruction caused by fossil-fuel-driven climate change. These fires are likely to become more common with hotter, drier conditions created by rising temperatures. The cost of the damage is eye-watering, estimated at more than $250bn (LA residents receive short reprieve from Santa Ana winds fanning deadly flames, 15 January).
In recent years many insurers have stopped offering fire insurance in California, such is the risk and cost of these events, with a number of companies pushed to the verge of insolvency even before the latest round. This example exposes how insurance is no solution to dealing with the impacts of climate change. Yet it is exactly this model that rich countries such as the US are pushing as a solution to climate‑change-induced loss and damage in poorer countries.
At the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai in 2023, world nations opened the loss and damage fund to provide support to the most vulnerable communities. But only a paltry amount has been deposited so far by rich countries, with many of them pushing for an insurance-based model instead – which mostly puts the financial burden back on developing countries.
If even the millionaires of Pacific Palisades cannot find insurance, what insurance policy is going to work for some of the poorest people living in Bangladesh, sub-Saharan Africa or low-lying island states? Most do not have the resources to pay the premiums, and companies will surely opt out of offering cover if climate impacts worsen. This needs to be a wake-up call for countries to ditch their false solution of insurance and instead make polluters pay and properly supply the loss and damage fund.
Nushrat Chowdhury
Climate justice policy adviser, Christian Aid Bangladesh
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