The Effects of Private Household Insurance on Climate Change Adaptation Strategies in Samoa

Abstract

The impacts of climate change are likely to cause significant damage to things people value around the world, including those living on Small Island Developing States (SIDS). At a household level, in addition to loss of life and personal injury, climatic hazards (such as tropical cyclones, drought, and flooding) can result in substantive loss and damages to people’s houses, other buildings and their contents. Insurance is one way that households can manage the risks posed by hazards. Accordingly, households in SIDS are being encouraged by their governments, NGOs, researchers, and insurance providers to take out household insurance to enhance their capacities to adapt to climate extremes and reduce the potential losses associated with climatic and other hazards. Private household insurance was, and still remains, relatively uncommon amongst households in Samoa, however scholars expect that an increasing number of households will take out natural perils insurance in the future as a way to protect their properties from expected climate-related loss and damage. In Samoa, numerous other adaptation interventions are also being implemented, including community-based adaptation projects which draw on the skills of the community to address the climate-change related hazards that are expected to affect local communities. Through semi-structured interviews with community members (with and without insurance) and an insurance company representative, this research explores private household natural perils insurance uptake in Samoa (a Pacific SIDS) and the effect that the uptake of this insurance is having on household engagement in other climate change adaptation strategies such as community-based adaptation projects. This thesis reveals that individuals whose homes are already insured with natural perils insurance were more likely to express more individualistic values or beliefs than those without natural perils insurance. Insured homeowners commonly framed adaptation as a technical challenge, with insurance part of the technical and expert-led approach to preparing for, managing, and recovering from extreme events; in contrast, householders without insurance perceived climate change adaptation as less of a technical and more of a social process. Those individuals with private household natural perils insurance coverage (in keeping with their more individualistic values) reported that they were less engaged in community-based adaptation projects compared to participants without insurance (who held more communalistic values). Given the importance of household participation in community-based adaptation projects, an increased uptake of insurance may have problematic outcomes for the adaptive capacity of the broader community. Thus, the results of this exploratory study indicate that further empirical research is required to determine the extent to which increasing insurance penetration in Samoa may reduce the adaptive capacity of the Samoan community by limiting the success of community-based adaptation.