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} Ocean Risk Initiative
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ON OCEAN RISK
Every 8 th of June people are invited to stop what they are doing and think
about the Ocean, what it means to us, and what we can do to help protect it.
By Karen Sack and Chip Cunliffe
Ocean Unite and the AXA XL Ocean
Risk Initiative’s work is centred on
the Ocean every day, so we don’t
need to stop. Instead we wanted
to celebrate and share the story of our work
together to help regenerate ocean health.
Ocean Unite and an insurance company may
seem unlikely partners, but in fact we have a
lot in common. We are both future-focused,
data and science-led, and alarmed by the
unprecedented changes happening in the
ocean and what they mean for the future. We
also both know that dealing with challenges
of this scale will take multidisciplinary action
and alliances.
Human activity is now changing the ocean
faster than at any time in the past 65
million years resulting in major threats to
communities, economies, and ecosystems and
the resulting vulnerabilities and risks will have
significant consequences over time. The ocean
has absorbed about 30 per cent of our C02
emissions and around 90 per cent of the heat
from those emissions.
New research shows that the rate of ocean
warming has quadrupled since the late 20th
century, with increasingly more heat finding its
way down into the deep ocean. The knock-on
effects of these changes are huge, particularly
given that the ocean is home to some 80 per
44 } Issue 10
cent of all of Earth’s biodiversity. Fish stocks
are moving, habitats and ecosystems are being
degraded, storms are increasing in intensity
and sea levels are rising – in fact, it is projected
that by 2050, 800 million people will be at
risk of coastal flooding and storm surges. This
will have lasting impacts on food security and
population stability.
Image by Stefanie Ferchland from Pixabay
These emerging and intensifying ocean-based
threats have created a whole new category of
risk: Ocean Risk. Coastal communities in small
island developing states, developing countries
and other low-lying areas are especially
vulnerable. And these changes also are not
gender neutral. They have disproportionate
impacts on women and girls, so gender-based
solutions are critical. We need to identify
where and how the impacts of these hazards
can be reduced by taking pre-emptive action
that reduces exposure and vulnerability and
builds resilience to these changes.
Insurance is by definition an investment
to guard against potential future risk. The
insurance industry is constantly seeking out
data and knowledge to model forward and
price emerging risk. AXA XL launched its Ocean
Risk Initiative in 2017 to generate research,
communicate the impacts of the changes we’re
seeing in the ocean and to identify and develop
effective solutions.
With just 30 per cent of economic losses
caused by natural disasters currently covered
by insurance – and as little as 5 per cent or less
in emerging economies– closing the so-called
protection gap is a priority for governments
and the insurance industry in order to prevent
catastrophic levels of loss that can wipe out
decades of development and are impossible for
vulnerable communities to recover from.
Continued on page 46
Image by Walkerssk from Pixabay