PODCASTS

Climate change is forcing the insurance industry to adapt and come up with new products. One experiment is testing out a policy to insure nature against extreme storms, specifically a coral reef in Mexico. Here & Now's Scott Tong learns more about the reef with Dr. Michael Beck.

An ecologist by training, Dr. Michael W. Beck had been working on more traditional ecological solutions related to marine protected areas until Hurricane Katrina, when he saw that there was a real need for understanding how natural habitats provide coastal resilience. Now his work focuses on figuring out how investing in nature and nature-based solutions can reduce coastal risk and save lives and money.

Dr. Michael W. Beck, professor at the University of California Santa Cruz, coauthored a new paper in Scientific Reports entitled, "The Global Flood Protection Benefits of Mangroves". Today we dig into how mangroves work against flooding, their carbon sequestration potential, how to quantify their financial benefit, and how that helps make them legible to financial systems.

A new analysis found the flood protection benefits of coral reefs save the global economy $4 billion dollars a year. Christopher Intagliata reports.

Using insurance industry models, researchers determined that wetlands prevented some $625 million in damages due to Hurricane Sandy. Christopher Intagliata reports.