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Short abstract:

In the climate finance discourse, automated environmental sensing and machine learning-aided data processing are proposed as an infrastructural opportunity for developing low-cost adaptation instruments. I analyze how insurance companies use environmental data in climate change adaptation mechanisms

Long abstract:

Financial institutions play a central mediatory role in climate change governance. In the climate finance discourse, automated environmental sensing and machine learning aided data processing are proposed as an infrastructural opportunity for developing low-cost adaptation instruments. However, this vision depends on data service companies that develop technological possibilities according to market conditions. In my Ph.D. work, I analyze finance as an interface of climate change governance. I ask how insurance companies transform environmental data into socioeconomic coordination in climate change adaptation mechanisms. In the paper I propose for this panel, I analyze World Bank’s data-based resilience project that outlines data platform markets as a system for structuring the possibilities and limitations for climate risk insurance in the Global South.

To make sense of the relationship between environmental data and climate insurance, I use horizon as a conceptual framework that I separate to two analytical registers. First, horizon refers to the governance of future climate risks as a discursive space surrounding the development of financial instruments and risk management standards. The political economic model of the horizon balances socioeconomic costs against benefits. Second, the climate finance discourse attends to the infrastructural organization of the horizon by analyzing the technological requirements for constructing biophysical systems as an object of governance. The objectification of biophysical factors as governmental constraints and resources is conditioned by available data infrastructure services. Overall, I map out how the relationship between socioeconomic interests and biophysical principles is constructed technologically and economically in the design of financial mechanisms.