Remote sensing data for managing climate risks: Index-based insurance and growth related applications for smallhold-farmers in Ethiopia

摘要

The aim of most index-based insurance programs is to act as a social security mechanismand to provide defense against social and financial exclusion for people whose existingcoping strategies are failing. For such schemes, insurance payouts do not depend on theindividual losses but on an index which serves as a proxy for the losses. As proposed in thispaper, also remote sensing data can be used for index-based insurance which givesadditional advantages in comparison to traditional on-ground based indexed instruments.Furthermore, distinguishing between a promotion as well as protection level within suchschemes is beneficial from a supply as well as demand side perspective and we suggestan approach how both can be simultaneously introduced within a remote sensing indexbased insurance framework. The applicability and usefulness of the approach is testedfor smallhold farmers in North Shewa, Ethiopia. It is found that the use of remote sensingdata is indeed a possible alternative to traditional weather based micro-insurance schemeswhich offers new ways to tackle current problems of such schemes from a supply side aswell as demand side perspective.