Will insurers safeguard the planet or greenwash business as usual?
Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Jan 2024
Members of Insure Our Future campaign have asked the global insurance industry to take immediate action to slow the climate crisis and support the urgent transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
The campaigners were protesting at the Geneva Association’s 50th anniversary summit in Zurich recently. The Geneva Association, which is perhaps the only international association of insurance companies, has CEOs of 78 global insurance and reinsurance companies as its members.
Members of the Geneva Association include the top insurers of fossil fuels globally, such as Lloyd’s of London, AIG and Zurich. Together, its members have over $500bn invested in some combination of oil, gas, coal, utilities and related activities.
Campaigners have called on the heads of insurance industry to stop investing in fossil fuel companies; to stop insuring new fossil fuel projects and to phase down their existing insurances of fossil fuel projects and companies, in line with pathways targeting 1.5 degrees C.
The campaigners have termed the CEOs and other senior insurance industry members of some the largest fossil fuel insurers as “accomplices in climate crimes”.