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Is insurance coverage against fast-growing climate risks disappearing in the United States?

Louisiana homeowner Tommy Becnel has never had a flood claim on his house in the hurricane-prone state, but his flood insurance premium is still set to rise 10-fold, to nearly $7,000 a year.

He is among thousands of homeowners facing steep flood insurance price hikes after an overhaul in risk ratings by the National Flood Insurance Program - the main source of U.S. home flood insurance - partly to factor in more extreme weather linked to climate change.

"I'm scared about what my community's going to look like if nothing's done," Matthew Jewell, the head of St. Charles Parish, told our correspondent David Sherfinski. "You're going to have people whose (insurance costs) are going to be more than their mortgages."

At Context, we're looking at how climate change is affecting access to a range of insurance, for risks from wildfires to floods. Read more here!

One key way to reduce rising climate threats - besides slashing oil, gas and coal use - is to provide greater "social protection" for those most at risk.

India, for instance, is battling a growing rash of suicides among severely drought-hit and indebted farmers, with 11,000 taking their lives in 2021.

But robust state-run rural jobs programmes, mental healthcare and crop insurance could ease growing distress, said researcher Ritu Bharadwaj, noting that "the likelihood of these cases (of suicide) increasing in the future is high" as climate impacts worsen.

Such safety net programmes could help farmers like Ganpatram Bheda, who fears he will lose his two acres of land after repeated failed harvests have left him with loans now totalling 4 million rupees ($49,000).

"I take one loan to repay another. If I don't do that, the bank will take away my land," he told correspondent Roli Srivastava.

Another form of insurance against worsening climate disasters is getting cash directly into the hands of frontline people who need to prepare for them - something happening far too rarely.

In Indonesia, the $3-million Nusantara Fund, launched last week, has become the country's first direct climate finance programme for Indigenous people and local communities.

It's paying for things like coffee bean storage and processing fields to help coffee-growing farmers stand up to new pressures - and for rejuvenation of degraded land.

Smarter farming could also insure against future hunger - but getting there may require shifting away from food systems based on high-tech, high-production farming to growing that is ecologically friendly, smaller scale and backed up with global efforts to cut food waste and meat eating, food experts said.

See you next week!

 Laurie