National Business Review 23 July 2021
New Zealand’s Natural Disaster Insurance Scheme, administered by the Earthquake Commission, is world leading. The scheme is designed to complement private insurance cover (increasingly sum insured rather than replacement) to wherever possible to put the customer back to a similar position that existed prior to the natural disaster. Show more…After natural disasters occur, it has been normal political practice to reasure the affected community that life will get back to ‘normal’ as soon as possible.
The thinking changed after the second Christchurch earthquake in February 2011. The question then became: ‘should rebuilding occur in the same locations?’. Why rebuild in areas of multiple natural hazard risk, particularly if the vulnerability to those hazards was increasing?
In the midst of yet another natural disaster, the floods in Wesport, natural hazards scientist Nick Rogers ponders the role of insurance in rerecovery, adaptation and resilience. Show less…
