Smallholder farmers play a vital role in ensuring the world has enough to eat, producing over 70 percent of the globe’s agricultural products. Yet they are often economically insecure, with their crops exposed in particular to the risks of drought and flooding—threats now being exacerbated by the global climate crisis. Insuring against weather-related disruption is one way of increasing their resilience, but it needs to be affordable.

The InsuResilience Investment Fund, managed by Blue Orchard Impact Investment Managers, aims to protect more than 100 million of the most vulnerable people against the effects of climate change, through investing in companies offering commercial insurance against extreme weather events and natural catastrophes.

The Fund also invests in technology companies that enable insurance companies to offer suitable and affordable insurance products to smallholder farmers. It is the only private, rather than government-backed, fund that is part of a broader climate risk insurance initiative backed by the United Nations and G7 industrial nations.

In addition to directly increasing the resilience of smallholder farmers facing extreme weather-related risks, the Fund will provide a model for additional private capital flows into the sector, and develop affordable models that may benefit other low-income groups facing climate risk.

InsuResilience’s approach to mitigating the impacts of the climate crisis is in line with Open Society’s broader effort to promote climate and social justice in low- and middle-income countries.