Blogs

Our new Insight Paper examines an innovation in sovereign debt contracts that may be groundbreaking in its potential impact – a debt pause clause.

In August 2022, extreme monsoon rains exacerbated by glacial melt runoff, resulted in catastrophic floods in Pakistan.

In this insight, Lead Risk Finance Adviser Conor Meenan explores why countries might choose to buy risk transfer even when costs are high and discusses aspects of the bond that affect its final price.

When disasters strike, governments are often forced to raid their existing budgets and make difficult trade-offs to finance emergency relief and recovery.

There is growing operational convergence between disaster risk finance and social protection, notably cash transfer programmes. But where does gender fit into these discussions?

The chance of another deadly pandemic is significant, but the current level of global investment in PPR does not yet provide the kind of protection the world needs for effective response.

As part of a series of conversations tackling the sticky questions around disaster risk and climate change finance, Centre experts seek to address key questions around climate change-induced losses and damages, and the role of disaster risk finance in tackling them.

With the hoopla of COP, you would be forgiven for missing a modestly-attended panel discussion on The Case for Climate Resilient Debt Clauses, a superficially simple idea that nonetheless could help pivot hundreds of billions of dollars towards tackling disaster risk.

The Sahel G5 group of countries- Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger- are increasingly poised between promises of stability and growth and the mounting sources of stress and uncertainty that could mire the region’s progress.

A new evidence review from the Centre for Disaster Protection and ODI introduces the key issues around climate change-induced losses and damages and the role that DRF mechanisms could play in tackling them.

Pakistan is in trouble. Heavy monsoon rains have flooded an area the size of the UK. The country’s National Disaster Management Agency estimates that 33 million people are affected.

Between spring 2020 and early 2022, the Centre supported OCHA in undertaking process learning on four anticipatory action (AA) pilots in Somalia, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi.

The obvious next question for humanitarian actors and donors is simple: "when is risk transfer a good option?".

Insurance can be a useful tool for managing the unpredictable costs of disasters. But humanitarians have a number of particularities linked to their principled approach, their funding and operating models.

Last month, the Centre hosted the executive leadership and technical experts for a Risk Pool Summit for two days of knowledge sharing, strategic alignment, and collaboration.

Humanitarian actors are seeking to better anticipate tomorrow’s crises, and prearrange funds to pay for responses that are still yet to happen.

In the first in a series of three blogs, Conor Meenan, Lead Risk Finance Specialist for the Centre, sets out to explore the role for risk transfer instruments – such as insurance - in a humanitarian context.

We are excited to announce that Theodore Talbot, Cristina Stefan, Omaira Chaudhry and Jessica Texter will be joining the team bringing years of experience across a diverse range of sectors.

This blog by Michèle Plichta reflects on the international crisis financing response to date and what this tells us about the state of how the world pays for disasters.

Mairi Dupar, Senior Technical Advisor for ODI tells us why the emergent pre-agreed disaster risk finance agenda cannot afford to be gender blind and calls for DRF mechanisms which bring transformative benefits to women and girls.