Insurantialization and the moral economy of ex ante risk management in the Caribbean

Abstract

This paper unpacks the emergence of pro-poor insurance-based climate change adaptation initiatives within development and disaster management agencies. It details how the equation between insurance and ethical climate change adaptation emerged through development economists’ moral and technical critique of ex post disaster relief, which positioned insurers’ unique styles of thought and practice as ethical and technical solutions to the problem of how to manage the state’s financial capacity. However, an example of Dominican disaster budgeting demonstrates how insurantialized disaster governance both compliments and contrasts with alternative disaster financing strategies based in Caribbean states’ efforts to create autonomy from plantation dependencies. In the contemporary Caribbean, the moral imperative to become economically self-sufficient reconfigures state-donor-market-society relations in ways that further hollow out Caribbean states’ political independence.

Keywords:

• insurance
• biopolitics
• budgeting
• governance
• disaster management
• development

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Stephen Collier, Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, Rebecca Elliot, Leigh Johnson, audiences at the April 2018 Climate Change and Insurance workshop at The New School, and the Financializing Urban Resilience sessions at the 2018 annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers in New Orleans, and the helpful comments and advice of three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This is a rough estimate based on capital expenditure funded through the PSIP comprising approximately 15–30 per cent of the GDP (Skerrit, 2012), Dominica’s flat 15 per cent VAT, and 65–75 per cent of the PSIP financed through external grants and loans.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin Grove

Kevin Grove is Associate Professor in the Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies, Florida International University. His research blends political geography cultural geography, and environmental security studies to explore the politics of emergency management and resilience in the Anthropocene.