The Coral Triangle is a 272-page book that showcases the people, places, and marine ecosystems that make this region truly remarkable. Published by ADB and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the book documents an 18-month expedition by award-winning photographer Jürgen Freund and Stella-Chiu Freund. 

Photo Essay

The Coral Triangle covers 5.7 million square kilometers of ocean waters in Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Philippines, Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste.  The area is considered as the global center of tropical marine diversity, supporting the highest number of species of coral reef fishes, and turtles. The mangrove forests, coral reefs, and coastal and offshore waters are the most species-rich in the tropics.

These resources are at immediate risk from a range of factors, including the impacts of climate change, over-fishing, unsustainable fishing methods, and land-based sources of pollution.

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MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Coastal communities in remote areas of the Coral Triangle in Indonesia and the Philippines will receive Asian Development Bank (ADB) support to start small, green businesses that will help preserve one of the most diverse and threatened marine environments in the world.

A $2 million grant from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction, administered by ADB, will help poor fishing households in Berau District in East Kalimantan, Indonesia and Balabac in Palawan, the Philippines, identify, establish and operate eco-friendly businesses that could potentially include seaweed culture, fish processing, boat transport services and livestock rearing.

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Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has introduced a new program, Bolsa Verde (Green Allowance), to compensate the poor for environmental protection, reports Globo News. Eighteen thousand families living in extreme poverty in the Brazilian Amazon are expected to benefit in the first stage of the program.

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http://news.mongabay.com

The Gansu and Xinjiang Pastoral Development Project, launched in 2004 and completed in June 2010, assisted in the government’s efforts to improve the capacity of pastoral areas to support biodiversity and livestock and raise the living standards of the population living in those areas.

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http://www.worldbank.org

Gorillas, the largest of the great apes, are under renewed threat across the Congo Basin from Nigeria to the Albertine Rift: poaching for bushmeat, loss of habitat due to agricultural expansion, degradation of habitat from logging, mining and charcoal production are amongst these threats, in addition to natural epidemics such as ebola and the new risk of diseases passed from humans to gorillas.

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UNEP

The main objectives of this paper are to design and test the commercial viability of the introduction of different flood insurance schemes in Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most flood struck developing countries in the world. The study presented here takes place in the context of both low supply due to the inherent risky nature of high expected losses caused by flooding and low insurance demand due to lack of financial income resources of large parts of the floodplain populations. In this paper we compare the expected compensation payment by potential insurers with the expected premium for different flood insurance schemes under two different institutional- analytical models: a partner-agent and full service model of micro-insurance. We find that although demand and willingness to pay (WTP) for flood insurance are low in flood risk areas in Bangladesh, commercially viable markets exist for house property and unemployment insurance. However, administrative implementation costs of micro-insurance play a significant role in determining the viability as well as the long-term sustainability of micro flood insurance schemes. The policy implication of the work presented here is that partner-agent models of microinsurance organization are a precondition for the long-term sustainability of a micro flood insurance market. We conclude that a full service based organizational structure is only viable in places where flood probability is considerably low.

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PREM

The main objectives of this paper are to design and test the commercial viability of the introduction of different flood insurance schemes in Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most flood struck developing countries in the world. The study presented here takes place in the context of both low supply due to the inherent risky nature of high expected losses caused by flooding and low insurance demand due to lack of financial income resources of large parts of the floodplain populations. In this paper we compare the expected compensation payment by potential insurers with the expected premium for different flood insurance schemes under two different institutional- analytical models: a partner-agent and full service model of micro-insurance. We find that although demand and willingness to pay (WTP) for flood insurance are low in flood risk areas in Bangladesh, commercially viable markets exist for house property and unemployment insurance. However, administrative implementation costs of micro-insurance play a significant role in determining the viability as well as the long-term sustainability of micro flood insurance schemes. The policy implication of the work presented here is that partner-agent models of microinsurance organization are a precondition for the long-term sustainability of a micro flood insurance market. We conclude that a full service based organizational structure is only viable in places where flood probability is considerably low.

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PREM

The aims of the study presented in this paper are to assess the demand for and test the commercial viability of a crop insurance scheme in different natural disaster-prone areas in Bangladesh, as an alternative poverty alleviation and natural disaster mitigation strategy. In a large scale household survey carried out at the end of 2006, 3600  riverine and coastal floodplain residents in Bangladesh were asked for their preferences for crop insurance schemes using the double bounded contingent valuation (CV) method.  For example, asking them for their willingness to pay (WTP) for crop insurance schemes to eliminate future catastrophe risks. We find crop insurance demand to be positively correlated with household head’s primary occupation, land ownership and size of agricultural farm land. Our study further reveals that crop damage cost and households’ willingness to pay to reduce damage vary significantly across the nature of the disaster risk. Using the data collected through household survey, we tested our simple analytical model of commercial viability of a crop insurance scheme by comparing the future value of expected premium receivable by insurer, with the expected indemnity payable to the insured. Assuming zero administrative cost and 10% interest rate per annum, we find crop insurance schemes are marginally viable in riverine flood plain areas (both embanked and unembanked). The difference between the average expected indemnity payment and the future value of expected insurance premium is way too high for the nature of risk and amount of damage cost faced by households living in haor basin and coastal floodplain areas.

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PREM

SAO PAULO – The massive Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in the heart of the Amazon rain forest won approval from Brazil's environmental protection agency on Wednesday, clearing the way for construction of a project fiercely opposed by environmentalists, indigenous activists and celebrities including film director James Cameron and rock star Sting.
The dam would be the world's third largest, behind China's Three Gorges dam and the Itaipu, which straddles the border of Brazil and Paraguay.
The consortium building Belo Monte still must obtain an operating license before producing energy, but Wednesday's decision allows for full-scale construction of an $11-billion project designed to produce 11,000 megawatts of electricity, more than 6 percent of Brazil's energy needs.

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