• The World Bank launched a new $150 million fund intended to help insure vulnerable countries against natural disasters and the increasing risk of climate change-linked crises.
• The announcement follows a string of recent natural disasters across the world including record storms and a series of deadly quakes in Indonesia, where the Bank and International Monetary Fund are currently meeting.
• The so-called Global Risk Financing Facility (GRiF), set up with money from Germany and Britain, will finance the creation of disaster insurance and other risk mechanisms so funds are available immediately when crises hit.
• The World Bank and other international institutions already have several mechanisms in place to help nations adapt to the risk of a changing environment.
• But the new fund is intended to bolster those programmes as the effects of climate change intensify.
• The development objective of the GRiF is to strengthen financial resilience of vulnerable countries by enabling earlier and more reliable response and recovery to climate and disaster shocks, and over time to a wider range of crises, through establishing or scaling up pre-arranged risk financing instruments, including market-based instruments like insurance. It will focus on helping poor and vulnerable people, and the economy, services and infrastructure they depend on, to recover more quickly when a disaster strikes.
• GRiF will be implemented by the World Bank, the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), and select implementing partners. GRiF funding will be channeled through the World Bank or select implementing partners such as regional development banks.
• The ultimate recipients of the GRiF funds are either (i) countries with adequate capacity and government systems in place; or (ii) humanitarian and development partners where appropriate to the context. GRiF works mainly with governments to implement risk financing strategies as part of core development planning and fiscal risk management, linking crisis response funding to contingency plans within national systems.

Source: TOI & Worldbank

For more info on the above fund please visit this link:

https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/disasterriskmanagement/brief/global-risk-financing-facility