Agricultural insurance and slow-onset events in the Mekong region: Issues and options for moving forward

The document argues that while agricultural insurance can provide quick financial support after sudden disasters, it is ill-suited for slow-onset events like sea-level rise and gradual temperature increases. In Viet Nam and Thailand, insurance programmes have struggled with financial sustainability, low voluntary uptake, and high compensation rates. The brief suggests moving toward holistic risk management, including micro-finance, sovereign risk sharing, and transformative agricultural adaptations.

• Agricultural insurance in the Mekong region has faced significant financial sustainability issues, characterized by high compensation rates and a heavy reliance on government subsidies. In Viet Nam's National Agricultural Insurance Pilot Programme (NAIPP), aquaculture insurance payouts exceeded premiums by two to four times, leading to overall losses for insurance companies.
• Insurance is fundamentally ill-suited for slow-onset events because these risks do not meet the core requirements of insurability: they are not sudden or unforeseen, and their economic impacts are accumulative rather than discrete. Consequently, experts suggest that insurance is not the appropriate tool for responding to these gradual threats.
• In the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, sea-level rise is compounded by land subsidence caused by groundwater extraction and sediment trapping by dams. It is estimated that by 2050, the delta will have subsided approximately 0.88 metres, with an additional 0.10 metres of sea-level rise, potentially leading to total inundation depths between 0.4 and 1.6 metres.
• Thailand's national rice insurance programme has struggled with low market penetration, covering only 2.3% of rice farmland in 2015. Because coverage is so limited, government aid and relief services have effectively functioned as the primary form of subsidized insurance for farmers.
• To address the limitations of insurance, the brief recommends alternative financial mechanisms such as micro-finance for building long-term assets and sovereign risk sharing to pool risks across countries, citing the African Risk Capacity (ARC) as a successful model for reducing the financial burden on individual governments.
• Transformative adaptation strategies are needed to address the root causes of vulnerability in the Mekong region. Suggested options include promoting salt-tolerant crop species, mangrove restoration, supporting off-farm employment to diversify income, and using assisted migration as a last resort.

APA

Vulturius, G., Boyland, M., & Salamanca, A. (2017). Agricultural insurance and slow-onset events in the Mekong region: Issues and options for moving forward. Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Agricultural_insurance_and_slow-onset_events_in_the_Mekong_region.pdf

Chicago

Vulturius, Gregor, Michael Boyland, and Albert Salamanca. Agricultural insurance and slow-onset events in the Mekong region: Issues and options for moving forward. Stockholm Environment Institute, 2017. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Agricultural_insurance_and_slow-onset_events_in_the_Mekong_region.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Vulturius |first1=Gregor |last2=Boyland |first2=Michael |last3=Salamanca |first3=Albert |title=Agricultural insurance and slow-onset events in the Mekong region: Issues and options for moving forward |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=2017 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Agricultural_insurance_and_slow-onset_events_in_the_Mekong_region.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{vulturius2017agricultural, author = {Vulturius, Gregor and Boyland, Michael and Salamanca, Albert}, title = {{Agricultural insurance and slow-onset events in the Mekong region: Issues and options for moving forward}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2017}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Agricultural_insurance_and_slow-onset_events_in_the_Mekong_region.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }