Marine Fisheries Insurance in India: Issues, Challenges and Future Strategies

Abstract

India's marine fisheries industry is a booming player in the country's principal economic sphere. As things stand, it brings in between $7 and $8 billion each year, provides employment for about 0.93 million people, and contributes to the nation's food security. But marine capture fisheries are intrinsically risky because of climate change, lightning, cyclone activity, and the presence of allied factors such as rising sea temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and the spread of infectious diseases. The economic and social security of the fishing community are directly threatened by these occurrences. However, India's institutional frameworks for dealing with risk and uncertainty in the marine fisheries sector have been woefully inadequate. Insurance is one of the most widely used risk management tools because it can effectively contain and mitigate a wide variety of risks, including asset risks, production and management risks, market risks, and personal and health risks. With a few notable exceptions, the great majority of fishing industry stakeholders do not have access to insurance because it is underutilized compared to other agricultural subsectors across the country. Therefore, it is crucial to strengthen loss and damage mechanisms and boost social safety nets and resilience, especially by safeguarding fish farmers, fish workers, and any other category of people who directly engage in fishing and related allied activities in light of both domestic and international legal and policy frameworks. It is time to implement some of the finest practices employed in the Caribbean and Japan and to expand on the technological and governance innovations already in place by utilizing remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS). With this aspect in mind, the researchers in this paper have traced the state of the fisheries insurance sector in the light of emerging environmental risks, the efficacy of legislative and policy frameworks to extend social security nets and resilience, particularly in the form of insurance, for the overall social and economic wellbeing of the fishermen community, and proposed viable strategies entailing the active role of government, awareness among stakeholders, the creation of a model parametric insurance plan, and the mobilization of scientific and innovative technologies in the fisheries insurance context.