Call: Operationalising insurance value of ecosystems

This Subprogramme aims to achieve a resource- and water-efficient economoy and society that is also resilient to climate change. Furthermore, it seeks to promote the protection and sustainable management of natural resources and ecosystems. Lastly, the Programme also supports the sustainable supply and use of raw materials, in order to meet the needs of a growing global population within the sustainable limits of the planet's natural resources and eco-systems.

There is an increasing trend worldwide in the occurrence and severity of disasters. This trend will be further aggravated by global changes, including environmental and climate change ones. As a result, individual households, industry, private investors and public authorities are finding themselves increasingly exposed to changing and multiple risks. Ecosystems, through the provision of their services, can provide more holistic solutions to disaster risk reduction and to the mitigation of the effects of climate change, while serving multiple purposes. For instance, they can simultaneously mitigate the impacts of hazards, enhance social, economic and environmental resilience, and reduce the exposure and vulnerability of communities, businesses, properties and other economic assets.

To promote the uptake of ecosystem-based approaches for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation,, the theoretical and empirical exploration of the concept of insurance value of the ecosystems – the value of the sustained capacity of ecosystems to reduce or eliminate risks to human society and economic activities caused by global change or natural hazards – and methodologies for operationalizing the concept are needed.

The insurance value of ecosystems comprises both an estimate of reduced risk, due to the physical presence of an ecosystem, and of the capacity to sustain risk reduction (resilience of the system) under global change. The insurance value of ecosystems has so far been overlooked in research and practice: e.g. socio-economic approaches to estimating insurance value are poorly developed, methodologies for quantifying and qualifying the insurance value of ecosystems are still in their infancy, and relevant institutional and economic incentives to protect, enhance or restore this insurance potential are lacking.

Nature-based solutions, by means of their proper insurance capacity, can provide cost-effective solutions for disaster risk management and reduction, and for climate change adaptation, but can also be used for the protection, restoration and conservation of ecosystems and thus enhance the insurance value of the latter.

At least three legal entities. Each of the three must be established in a different EU Member State or Horizon 2020 associated country. All three legal entities must be independent of each other. 

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU in the range of 5 million € would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts. Funding rate: 100%