Microfinance Loans to Give the Poor a Working Chance - Opportunity Blog

Crop Insurance: Protecting Farmers Against the Effects of Climate Change

By Opportunity International on June 8, 2010
Jeffrey Ebarrita (right) uses a GPS device to survey the land of Rodolfo Felipe, an Opportunity crop insurance policyholder in the Philippines.
Jeffrey Ebarrita (right) uses a GPS device to survey the land of Rodolfo Felipe, an Opportunity crop insurance policyholder in the Philippines.

A recent UPI wire story, which highlights Opportunity International’s weather-index crop insurance, hails microinsurance as an exciting new tool to help communities in the developing world face the worst impacts of climate change. The article, “Insuring the world’s poor against climate change,” quotes the UN University Institute for Environment and Human Security‘s Koko Warner as saying, “Because of things like location, education and life expectancy, the world’s poor are a lot more vulnerable to climate change.”

Weather-index crop insurance protects farmers from the financial risks associated with extreme weather such as drought, flood and typhoon–“events that stand to become more frequent as the climate changes.” A grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is enabling Opportunity to pilot and expand the crop insurance program to several countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

Read the article here.

Watch the video, “The True Impact of Crop Insurance,” to discover how smallholder farmers in Malawi (with less than two acres) are protecting their crops from drought–and their families from starvation.

Read our latest Impact newsletter (page 4) for more about one of the world’s leading experts on weather-index crop insurance, Shadreck Mapfumo, who also serves as Opportunity’s vice president of agriculture.

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Comments

  • ljj

    Weather-index crop insurance is a wonderful new microfinance tool available to clients to ensure that farmers more susceptible to weather related hardships will now have the security in case something catastrophic happens to their crops. It's great to once again hear how Opportunity is developing tools based on the clients' needs.

  • eriemer

    Thank you for your email. I'm currently away from the office but will return on Wednesday, Dec. 8. I will respond to your message when I return.

    Emily

    Have you read the Opportunity blog? http://www.opportunity.org/blo…/

  • http://tagen.infozu.com/6973/cgi/cgi-session-going-small-for-big-results-microfranchise-and-entrepreneurial-growth.php CGI Session-Going Small for Big Results: Microfranchise and Entrepreneurial Growth

    [...] Global Initiative in new York. This morning, CGI sessions have explored climate change with President Clinton and eight other world leaders, population issues with Clinton and New York [...]

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_H7YXEJJCST2FXI36FHA24GVTPA Cobweb Kaplan

    Climate is so severe at times… It’s good they came up with such a great idea to provide weather-index crop insurance to the farmers.

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