Heat insurance an answer to wares
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Much of the jewelry and crafts sold at an artisan market in Ahmedabad, India, can’t take the heat — and it’s costing the vendors, according to a Reuters report on first-ever heat insurance offered to small businesses grappling with rising temperatures melting their handiwork, turning items into unsellable “junk.”
When the heat rises, the brass blackens and plastic pearls become unglued, artisan Kamlaben Ashokbhai Patni told a reporter from a wooden stall in her village.
“The color of the jewel starts to fade as it becomes hotter, making it worthless and akin to junk,” said the 56-year-old mother of four, on a late April day when temperatures simmered around 100 degrees.
Ms. Patni is now among 21,000 self-employed women there who subscribe to what Reuters says is the world’s first insurance product for extreme heat, launched this month by nonprofit Arsht-Rock Foundation Resilience Center in partnership with microinsurance startup Blue Marble and a trade union.
If temperatures climb high enough above historical averages and linger there for three days, sellers like Ms. Patni receive a small payout to help cope and compensate lost income, according to the report.
