ABSTRACT

In Senegal, various development pilot projects experimented with agricultural index insurance to make drought insurable. These interventions produced ‘rainfall deficit’ as an environmental problem suited for such market-based solutions. Investigating the materiality of this index insurance scheme, I explore the environmental market infrastructure, which produces risk conventions, articulates governance and market requirements, and fuels the promise of cheap, efficient, and automated environmental risk management in the Global South. I show that the production of such risk requires both a selective reduction of the physical reality of drought and the substantial reordering of material activities that organize many actors around rainfall deficit. Meteorological data produced by rain gauges placed in Senegalese fields were a central element in the initial infrastructure of index insurance. However, as reductionist technologies are often prone to failure, this index insurance scheme met many challenges. After documenting the design of this insurance scheme and the obstacles encountered, the paper depicts how actors in charge of its implementation made a shift in the insurance infrastructure from field rain gauges to remote sensing – in order to re-energize index insurance’s expectations.

摘要

在塞内加尔，各种发展试点项目都试验了农业指数保险，以使干旱可投保。这些干预措施产生了“降雨不足”，这是一个适合这种基于市场的解决方案的环境问题。考察该指数保险方案的重要性，探索环境市场基础设施，它产生风险公约，阐明治理和市场要求，并推动全球南方廉价、高效和自动化的环境风险管理的承诺。我表明，这种风险的产生既需要有选择地减少干旱的物理现实，也需要对围绕降雨不足组织许多参与者的物质活动进行大量重新排序。放置在塞内加尔油田的雨量计产生的气象数据是指数保险初始基础设施的核心要素。然而，由于还原论技术往往容易失败，这种指数保险方案遇到了许多挑战。在记录了这个保险计划的设计和遇到的障碍之后，