In 2019, the SCOR Corporate Foundation for Science and the French Natural History Museum (Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle or MNHN) created a research chair in Biodiversity and (Re)Insurance.
(2019-2021)
The SCOR-MNHN Chair aims to assess the current diversity situation and to study the current and potential interactions between biodiversity and (re)insurance, particularly in terms of damage caused and constraints to be imposed.
The Director of the Chair is the Museum’s Directeur de l’Expertise.
Steering Committee
Foundation: Zeying Peuillet and Guillaume Levannier
Museum: Alexis Ferrat (sponsorship) and Nirmala Séon-Massin (expertise)
Objectives of the Chair
The chair more particularly studies the following three dimensions of the topic:
- a summary of scientific knowledge on the links between present and future human activities and biodiversity;
- (re)insurance activities, whether risk coverage or investment activities, with the aim of identifying those activities that are most likely to alter biodiversity, negatively or positively;
- the risks that biodiversity loss poses to future human activities, and more particularly to (re)insurance activities, as well as the opportunities that actions in favor of biodiversity are likely to generate for people and for (re)insurance in particular.
The partnership led to the publication of a report entitled “Biodiversity and Re/insurance: An Ecosystem at Risk”, which reviews the scientific evidence of links between present and future human activities and biodiversity, investigates the extent to which (re)insurance activities impact biodiversity, examines the risks that biodiversity loss will create for future human activities and explores the opportunities that acting in favor of biodiversity could generate. Click here to access the full report.
The conclusions of this research were discussed with scientists and (re)insurance professionals during a dedicated conference organized jointly by MNHN and the SCOR Foundation in May 2021, as part of the momentum in the run up to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP15 due to be held in Kunming, China, in October 2021. Click here to know more about the conference.
Read the final report of the SCOR-MNHN Chair on biodiversity: Biodiversity and Re/Insurance: an Ecosystem at Risk.
Bruno David, President of the French National Natural History Museum since 2015,
explains the importance of the SCOR-Natural History Museum Chair
The exhibition, extended until January 2019, averaged 848 visitors per day in the 33 weeks since it began in April 2018. In June 2018, SCOR Foundation for Science sponsored an international symposium on meteorites at the museum, which brought together 140 participants representing 50 European and Asian laboratories, as well as 20 researchers from the museum itself.
