Insurantialization and the moral economy of ex ante risk management in the Caribbean. Issue 2 (3rd April 2021) - Grove, Kevin
Abstract: This paper unpacks the emergence of pro-poor insurance-based climate change adaptation initiatives within development and disaster management agencies. It details how the equation between insurance and ethical climate change adaptation emerged through development economists' moral and technical critique of ex post disaster relief, which positioned insurers' unique styles of thought and practice as ethical and technical solutions to the problem of how to manage the state's financial capacity. However, an example of Dominican disaster budgeting demonstrates how insurantialized disaster governance both compliments and contrasts with alternative disaster financing strategies based in Caribbean states' efforts to create autonomy from plantation dependencies. In the contemporary Caribbean, the moral imperative to become economically self-sufficient reconfigures state-donor-market-society relations in ways that further hollow out Caribbean states' political independence.