The Cook Islands : Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance
This country note is produced is part of The Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment andFinancing Initiative (PCRAFI). The geographic spread of the Cook Islands poses logistical problems for any necessary post-disaster relief and response efforts. The...
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
Washington, DC
2015
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/02/24157490/cook-islands-country-note-disaster-risk-financing-insurance-cook-islands-disaster-risk-financing-insurance http://hdl.handle.net/10986/21697 |
| Summary: | This country note is produced is part of
The Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment
andFinancing Initiative (PCRAFI). The geographic
spread of the Cook Islands poses logistical problems for any
necessary post-disaster relief and response efforts. The
events of 2005 demonstrated that the Cook Islands is
extremely vulnerable to the threat of tropical cyclones
(TCs): in the two months of February and March 2005, TCs
Meena, Nancy, Olaf, Percy, and Rae swept the country. The
Cook Islands is expected to incur, on average, about NZ$6
million (US$4.9 million) per year in losses due to tropical
cyclones. In the next 50 years, the Cook Islands has a 50
percent chance of experiencing a per-event loss exceeding
NZ$97 million (US$79.5 million. The Cook Islands has a
proactive approach to disaster risk financing and insurance
(DRFI), which is supported by the upper echelons of
government. In January 2011, the prime minister in his role
as chair of the National Disaster Risk Management Council
requested that the Ministry of Finance and Economic
Management look at ways to become self-reliant in initial
disaster response and generate new income streams for
investment in a fund specifically for disaster management
response and recovery. The Cook Islands has available a
maximum amount of NZ$5.6 million (US$4.6 million) in the
form of contingency funds and catastrophe risk insurance to
facilitate disaster response. A number of options for
further improving the Cook Islands financial protection
against disasters are presented for consideration: (a) the
development of an integrated DRFI strategy; (b)
investigation of using contingent credit to access
additional liquidity post-disaster; (c) development of an
operations manual for post-disaster budget mobilization and
execution; and (d) the identification of assets to be
included in an insurance program for critical public assets. |
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