Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of the Government's support for climate risk insurance as part of her preparations for the COP22 UN Climate Change Summit in Marrakesh, to be held in November 2016.

The UK is proud to be a global leader in disaster risk finance and insurance and we are committed to contributing to meeting the G7’s InsuResilience collective target (set out in the 2015 G7 Leaders Elmau declaration) of helping up to an additional 400 million people in the most vulnerable developing countries to gain access to climate risk insurance by 2020. The Department for International Development (DFID) leads the delivery of the Government’s plans to scale up the use of insurance and risk finance instruments in developing countries to enable:

• Increased resilience for millions of the most vulnerable people, through improved access to insurance cover,
• Faster, more efficient emergency response, with a larger proportion of losses in vulnerable developing countries to be covered by insurance systems, taking the strain off the overstretched humanitarian system,
• Stronger and more stable economic development in developing countries, by helping to reduce the costs and barriers to credit.