Carina Keskitalo, Umeå University

2010-2015

The project aims to describe how the private sector in relation to water and insurance industry in Sweden and Britain - two countries with relatively different governance structure and level of work on adaptation to climate change - may be included in adaptation efforts. The inclusion of the private sector in issues around adaptation to climate change is relatively under-studied in the literature, where much of the focus around the development of adaptation as an area has focused either on adaptation policies at the state level or at the level of local case studies. Water and insurance areas were selected as two sectors where the private sector may relatively early and clearly need to deal with issues around climate change adaptation.

The project has followed the project plan but has been extended, and the implementation of certain aspects of the project have shifted in time. At inception, a literature review with regard to adaptation and insurance was developed (Starominski-Uehara and Keskitalo, submitted) and a first preliminary study was initiated. The study showed that even more limited development on adaptation than expected had been carried out in Sweden with regard to adjustment in the private sector. Therefore, instead of a first article that compared Sweden and the UK, it became relevant to broaden the study in order to establish a "baseline" with regard to understanding of adaptation of the private sector and especially the focused sectors on an international level. The first publication from the project "Adaptation to Climate Change in the insurance sector: examples from the UK, Germany and the Netherlands" (Keskitalo et al 2014) compares how adaptation issues mainly in relation to water / flood risk were managed nationally and by the insurance industry in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. These three countries were chosen because of differences in insurance systems - ranging between mainly state to mainly private responsibility - as well as the relevance of water issues. The article shows how the relationship between the insurance industry and the state is changing in all three countries, partly as a result of large flood catastrophes including that at the Elbe in Germany in 2002 and the floods in England in year 2000. For example, in England there is now a discussion of how the mainly private insurance system is to be supplemented by public funding, while insurance companies in the Netherlands discuss potential avenues to complement the main public insurance system. In addition to in this article, an international comparison was also been developed regarding the integration of climate change adaptation issues in Hawaii, the US, which even though it is relatively a high risk area has had to prioritize down adaptation issues both in relation to insurance and general (Starominski-Uehara and Keskitalo, in press). In general, these studies indicated that climate adaptation in the insurance industry, even though it is relatively well developed in this sector compared to other sectors, so far had not reached great practical impact except in certain cases (such as in the UK following flood catastrophes).

In relation to this, the study also developed two publications on how the private and public sectors may work together in local cases, selecting two cases that focused on climate adaptation in relation to water (Scholten et al, Meijerink et al, in press). The articles indicate the major differences between states in how the relationship between the public and private sectors are managed in different countries, and how, for example, England's relatively complex system based on administrative levels is different from the Dutch system where water issues have been central to relate different levels to each other and include the relationship with consumers. Leadership theory was used in these articles in order to elucidate the role of different promoters within the local cases to bring in adaptation issues at different levels. The study thus illustated the larger problems compared with the Dutch case to manage multi-dimensional water issues within the English planning system. To shed further light on this case the project leader has also developed a draft article dealing with the water industry in the UK, with a focus on England. The article is intended to further demonstrate the development and integration of adaptation policy at different levels and in different sectors in England, and will be completed after the project finalization.

In order to on this basis compare developments in Sweden with the international context was a policy literature review and interviews conducted with regard to how adaptation issues were managed in insurance industry in Sweden (Vulturius and Keskitalo, submitted). The study showed that climate has so far not played a major role in risk assessment and pricing in the insurance industry, and that the link between municipal planning and insurance industry to include climate adapt planning could be developed more. Glaas and Keskitalo (submitted) and Amundsen et al (draft) further showed that these types of issues around climate adaptation in the insurance industry were not only relevant to Sweden but also to Norway, Denmark and Finland. An article about how flood issues are managed in different countries (Keskitalo et al, submitted) also showed how adaptation policy development has so far led to relatively limited practical changes, for example at the municipal level, in the absence of mandatory requirements. To deepen the understanding of what changes and level of change could potentially be developed, the project further also conducted studies of how risks may increase with climate change have historically been handled in the forest sector in Sweden, which indicated a certain path dependence and limitation in how risk is managed within systems (Andersson and Keskitalo, submitted).

Conclusions of the project thus include that adaptation to climate change has so far mainly been integrated at the policy level in the concerned cases; this can partly be since a more comprehensive handling of the issue would require, among other things, changes in pricing and risk assessment system potentially down to the level of property survey and in how insurance is sold (e.g. currently regularly without locally specific risk assessment). While water issues in the sense of the flood is perhaps the part of adaptation that has been focused the most, internationally speaking, even integration of adaptation in this area has led mainly to policy changes at various levels, but to fewer implemented practical changes (a conclusion also advanced in the IPCC WG2 report). However, the study also shows that these issues are discussed at many levels and in many different countries and cases, which can be seen as a first step in the institutionalization process.

A large part of cooperation in the project has been co-financed with other projects or by the applicant's institution (for postdoctoral student Peter Scholten) and also been made possible by Keskitalo recruited to the Nordic excellence program NORD-STAR, which is funded by the Nordic Council and among other things deals with climate adaptation. This has enabled implementation of the project despite the fact that RJ did not allow that project funds sought for the main applicant could be tranferred to other persons - for example, at the postdoctoral or project assistant level - when the main applicant could not take on all the work herself (in particular as it became relevant to undertake broader country comparisons). NORD-STAR has also constituted a beneficial cooperation context and amongst other resulted in broader publication of project findings, including in graduate education.

The selection of journal publishing strategies has mainly related to disciplinary and subject relevance. Open access publishing of publications has been implemented mainly through self-archiving of the article in the public archive at university (University of Umeå database DiVA); an article has so far also been published in the Open Access format, and articles in press and submitted are planned for Open Access publication also directly through the journal in the cases the journal provides this option.

Publications

Andersson, L. F. and E. C. H. Keskitalo (submitted) “Understanding insurance risk assessment and its potential impact in relation to climate change in historical context”
Amundsen, H., Vola, J., Hovelsrud, G. K., Keskitalo, E. C. H. and G. Vulturius (in prep) “Flood compensation in the Nordic countries - changing flood regimes and compensation systems”
Glaas, E., E. C. H. Keskitalo (submitted) ”Influences of public policy on insurance industry implementation of climate change adaptation: the case of Scandinavia”
Keskitalo, E. C. H., G. Vulturius, P. Scholten (2014) “Adaptation to climate change in the insurance sector: examples from the UK, Germany and the Netherlands”. Natural Hazards 71:315–334
Keskitalo, E. C. H., N. Baron, H. Fyhn, J. Klein (submitted) ”The complexity of implementing local climate change adaptation and mitigation actions: the role of regulation in a multi-level governance context”
Keskitalo, E.C. H. (utkast) “Adaptation to climate change in the water sector: examples from the UK”
Meijerink, S., S. Stiller, E. C. H. Keskitalo, P. Scholten (in press) The role of leadership in regional climate change adaptation, A comparison of adaptation practices initiated by governmental and non-governmental actors. Journal of Water and Climate Change
Scholten P, Keskitalo C, Meijerink S (in press) “Bottom-up initiatives towards climate change adaptation in cases in the Netherlands and the UK: a complexity leadership perspective”. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy
Starominski-Uehara, M. and E. C. H. Keskitalo (in press) "Integrating adaptation to climate change within existing insurance and policy considerations? The case of Hawaii” Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy
Starominski-Uehara, M. and E. C. H. Keskitalo (submitted) "How does natural hazard insurance literature discuss the risks of climate change?"
Vulturius, G. and E. C. H. Keskitalo (submitted) “Drivers and challenges for climate change adaptation in the Swedish insurance system”

Presentationer/presentations
”Climate change in the Arctic. Who is vulnerable?” Keynote, Second Nordic International Conference on Climate Change Adaptation: Research Meets Decision-Making. Helsinki 29-31 August 2012
“Adaptation to climate change? The water- and insurance industry in Sweden and Great Britain”. Presentation to Swedish insurance companies at the In Hac Vita NORD-STAR project workshop, September 10, 2012, Stockholm.
P. Scholten, E. C. H. Keskitalo, S. Meijerink “The role of leadership in synchronising public and private agendas in flood risk management”. The Governance of Adaptation - An international symposium. Amsterdam, the Netherlands, March 22-23, 2012
Keskitalo, E. C. H. and S. Meijerink (co-chairs) “Climate governance: a leadership perspective”, 7th ECPR General Conference, Bourdeaux, France 4-7 September 2013.

Utbildning/education
Föreläsning om klimatanpassning vid doktorandkursen/Lecture on climate change adaptation at the PhD course Climate Adaptation Policy (organised by/organiserad av NORD-STAR) 13-17 augusti/August 2012, Islands universitet/University of Iceland, Reykjavik