Policy Issues In Insurance Environmental Risks And Insurance

This report focuses on the role of insurance and reinsurance companies in the management of environmental risks - environmental pollution risk and natural catastrophe risk in particular.

Can insurance be used as a means to obtain compliance with environmental policy? Answering this question requires examination of a broad mosaic of academic issues, including current systems available for providing compensation and deterrence, use of contracts (including insurance) as substitutes for tort law, limitations of regulatory policy-making by government agencies, pre-conditions for creation of insurance products, and market mechanisms necessary for insurance to be purchased or sold. The purpose of Managing Environmental Risk Through Insurance is to highlight the potential role that insurance and performance standards can play in managing environmental risk. Insurance can play a significant role in dealing with one of the most problematic issues facing society today - how to compensate for environmental exposures. This book analyzes the ability of insurance to play a role in managing environmental risk. It begins by outlining the role insurance plays in society in contrast to other societal tools for addressing risk: government benefit programs and imposition of involuntary liability using the court system. By so doing, the book describes the comparative advantages of insurance. The book then analyzes the insurability of the risks. Finally, the book applies the insurability analysis to three concrete environmental examples.

This volume contains an in-depth analysis of the assessment, management and compensation of the so-called "expanding systemic risks", to which market players and insurers are exposed.

This is the only comprehensive text on the increasingly important subject of environmental risk and insurance. The author presents many risk and insurance issues from acid rain and global warming to toxic tort law developments and the crisis with workers' compensation insurance and pollution liability coverage. This volume is the product of nearly eight years of research, which included reviewing over 250,000 pages of laws, documents, reports, and notes, as well as countless hours of investigations, interviews, and research. Basic and advanced environmental liability and insurance principles are covered, along with suggestions for financing pollution cleanups and safety programs. A new method for restructuring and improving Superfund is presented after an in-depth discussion of pertinent legal and financial issues. The book also provides local, national, and international case histories demonstrating the kinds of difficulties encountered by businesses and citizens and the solutions they have sought. All of this information, combined with the valuable charts, appendices, specimens, contracts, sample insurance policies, model letters, and certificates, makes Environmental Risk and Insurance an unmatched reference source for businesses, institutions, and government agencies caught up in the midst of analyzing their environmental risk exposures.

Environmental liability issues will dominate the insurance market as we move into the next century. As the problem of historic pollution moves into the forefront of public consciousness, the insurance industry will increasingly be targeted as the main contributor to clean-up costs and there are enormous liabilities stored up under old policies which underwriters and insurers will seek to avoid. Inevitably insurance cover under current policies will be restricted and new policies will emerge. This book looks at the old policies and their attached liabilities and at the new risk-transfer mechanisms available. It provides: a comprehensive analysis of the issues which the insurance industry had to address and those which it will have to address in the future; the legal stumbling blocks which plague the field of environmental insurance, such as triggerage issues, exclusion clauses, historic liability, policy limitations, criminal liability and defence costs, issues affecting underwriters, and at how companies should protect their insurance positions; how old insurance policies can be made to cover historic pollution liability and how to best manage existing environmental risk and the steps that companies should be taking now. This book is essential reading for all barristers, solicitors, insurers, reinsurers, local authorities, lawyers and planners, company directors, in-house offices, lawyers, developers and environmental consultants concerned with environmental liability.

"An Introduction to the Law and Economics of Environmental Policy" emphasises the importance of institutional design in addressing social problems. Three important issues concerning institutional design are: policies, instruments, and enforcement. This volume surveys each of the issues, and emphasises the common themes arising in optimal institutional design. These themes include the cost of complex institutional design, and the role of private institutions attaining social objects. This book will be particularly useful to law schools, departments of government, policy or economics, environmental managers and insurance companies.

Contains three reports focusing on different institutional approaches to the financial management of large-scale catastrophes, the role of risk mitigation and insurance in reducing the impact of natural disasters, and the importance of strategic leadership in the management of crises.