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Parts of the world could become uninsurable if climate change was not checked, the head of the insurance industry's international ClimateWise initiative says.
Andrew Torrance, who is also chief executive of Allianz Insurance, was speaking at a United Nations Environment Programme conference in Cape Town, ahead of UN climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
"We want to continue to make the provision of insurance right around the world very widely available," he said. "We want to limit and in the best scenario remove altogether the possibility that areas of the world will become uninsurable."
This was why insurers were taking an active and public role in signalling to policy-makers what they wanted to come out of Copenhagen.
He said climate modelling clearly predicted that with global warming the frequency and severity of weather catastrophes would increase.
This would drive up the losses for which insurers had to pay, and the amount of capital they would have to hold. Torrance said ClimateWise was calling for a global reduction in emissions so that worldwide average temperatures did not rise above two degrees from pre-industrial levels.
Earlier this week, the world's 43 small islands, threatened by rising sea levels, urged commitment from world leaders to a "robust and legally binding climate deal" at Copenhagen.
