Creating positive synergies between risk management and transfer to accelerate food system climate resilience

Climate change will significantly impact the future viability and security of food production systems, with increased frequency and intensity of droughts, floods, storms and other extreme climatic events predicted in many regions. In order for food production systems to remain viable and resilient under a changing climate, novel approaches, which integrate risk management (i.e. adaptation) and risk transfer strategies, such as insurance, are required. We argue that the coordinated integration of risk management and risk transfer approaches will support greater resilience of food production systems under climate change. Conversely, if risk management and risk transfer strategies are not carefully integrated, there is potential to undermine adaptive capacity (e.g. insurance subsidies may dissuade farmers from investing in climate adaptation) and ultimately reduce the capacity of food production systems to cope with and recover from the adverse impacts of climate change. Here we propose a resilience-based conceptual framework for integrating risk management and risk transfer strategies along with four key principles, which we believe could underlie their successful integration and thus enhance food production system resilience under climate change. These are as follows: (1) pro-active investments in farmer climate adaptation rather than re-active disaster relief, (2) structuring of government subsidies around insurance and climate disaster relief to incentivise farmer climate adaptation, (3) rewarding farmer efforts towards climate adaptation with cheaper insurance premiums for those farmers that invest resources into climate adaptation and (4) recognising investments in the integration of farm climate adaptation and risk transfer schemes within the broader context of future climate disaster risk management and global food security. Such an integrated investment approach could substantially reduce future economic losses for farmers while also enhancing food security under climate change.