Insurers need to play a greater role in helping to manage high-risk flood areas in Indigenous communities, a tribal chief said during the CatIQ Connect conference earlier this month.
“At some point, you as insurers are going to have to start guiding development away from the highest-risk flood areas by saying no to coverage,” says Tyrone McNeil, president and tribal chief with the Stó:lo Tribal Council in British Columbia. “And you’d be like-minded with us in that, because we want to promote resilience, promote nature-based solutions for those long-term strategies and actions that we’ll all benefit from.”
McNeil was discussing disaster response from an Indigenous perspective. He noted the federal government’s National Risk Profile in late 2023 found about 10% of Canadians are living in high-risk flood areas. But that number is inverse for the majority of First Nations people, 90% of whom are living in high-risk flood areas, McNeil said during the Inclusivity in Disaster Management session.
From an insurance perspective, those in high-risk flood areas are often ineligible for insurance coverage, or the coverage is cost-prohibitive.
McNeil says building in flood zones…
