Nature Restoration & Conservation Insurance Initiative

What is the NatReCo Initiative?

It offers innovative (re)insurance solutions to support nature-resilient projects that address and/or mitigate societal challenges like climate change, food and water security, and sustainable agriculture. It has been developed by SCOR to improve resilience and to support the transition to a better tomorrow.

About the Ecological Restoration Insurance Solution

The first solution developed by SCOR as part of the NatReCo Initiative, it focuses on projects which intend to assist the recovery of the biodiversity and integrity of a native ecosystem which has been previously degraded (that is it has been altered in composition, structure or function).

Healthy ecosystems are essential for maintaining the planet’s biological diversity and the natural capital that sustains human life and well-being because of the ecosystem services they provide to societies. However, ecosystems are rapidly declining with some at risk of collapse.

There can be reluctance to finance nature-related projects for a variety of reasons including the inherently unpredictable and dynamic nature of ecosystems and the drivers that impact them, uncertainty about returns on investments and the lack of governance and standards around ecological restoration projects.

The Ecological Restoration Insurance Solution proposes to bridge the ‘gap’ between the need and desire for financing ecological restoration projects by de-risking financing opportunities.

About the Restore product

The first insurance product of the Ecological Restoration Insurance Solution which has been developed in collaboration with the international non-profit organization the Society for Ecological Restoration, it protects ecosystem restoration projects. It is designed to cover, following an insured event, the financial costs associated with creating the restoration conditions necessary to return an ecosystem to its planned recovery trajectory, having reviewed the ‘quality’ of the project using SCOR’s own standards-based approach.

About the Manage product

The “Manage” product marks the next evolution of the Ecological Restoration Insurance Solution. It covers the ongoing management phase of a project, which focuses on maintaining and improving the conditions for recovery that have been implemented. This allows the ecosystem integrity level to continue to increase, which in turn lowers the vulnerability level.

While they naturally complement one another, both Restore and Manage are also standalone products, depending on where a stakeholder is in the project timeline.

The Manage product adopts the same features as Restore, including the standards-based approach developed by SCOR in collaboration with the international non-profit organization the Society for Ecological Restoration (“SER”). SER rates the “quality” of a project to make sure that SCOR only insures projects which advance ecological restoration and commit to integrity and transparency. SCOR will also engage SER-certified practitioners globally to support the claims evaluation process.

In bringing these insurance products to market, SCOR’s own internal experts are supported by a diverse group of advisers with decades of technical experience in this field, including a Chair Emeritus, IUCN, Commission on Education and Communication; a Climate Smart Agriculture Expert & Entrepreneur; a former CEO of NatureServe, a spinoff of The Nature Conservancy; an Executive Director of SER and International Policy Lead at SER; a Chair Emeritus, IUCN, World Commission on Protected Areas; a former Senior Partner of an international law firm; and a Senior Conservation Scientist.
 

"At SCOR, we understand that an ecological restoration project can take years to complete, and that the level of risk changes throughout the project. That is why we have developed, and will continue to develop, products which we believe will appropriately support stakeholders on their project journey and which reflect the risks their project is facing."

Jean-Paul Conoscente, Chief Executive Officer of SCOR P&C

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