Objectifying Climate Change

• Author: Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen
• Date: 01 February 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591716680684
• Published date: 01 February 2017
• Subject Matter: Nature Returns

Political Theory

2017, Vol. 45(1) 32 –51

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DOI: 10.1177/0090591716680684

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Nature Returns

Objectifying Climate

Change: Weather-

Related Catastrophes as

Risks and Opportunities

for Reinsurance

Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen1

Abstract

For quite some time, reinsurance companies have been pricing the ongoing

climate change using weather- and catastrophe-related instruments and

thus have been able to make money through climate change. Yet, at the

same time, for reinsurance companies it is crucial that the likelihood of the

events they underwrite is diminished as much as possible. Consequently,

while profiting from the situation, these key actors of global capitalism also

work to prevent climate change from taking place, and support the kinds of

measures, on all political scales, that diminish the likelihood of severe climate

change destruction. This article analyzes the materials that the reinsurance

company Munich Re has distributed to stakeholders and asks how climate

change is objectified by the reinsurance industry. How are weather-related

catastrophes made into a financial risk and opportunity? The key conceptual

tools for answering these questions are provided by Michel Serres’s work

on world-objects.

Keywords

climate change, reinsurance, risk and uncertainty, catastrophe, Michel Serres

1School of Social Science and Humanities, University of Tampere, Finland

Corresponding Author:

Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen, School of Social Science and Humanities, 33014 University of

Tampere, Finland.

Email: turo-kimmo.lehtonen@uta.fi

680684PTXXXX10.1177/0090591716680684Political TheoryLehtonen

research-article2016

Lehtonen 33

Introduction: Climate Change, Reinsurance and

World-Objects

For the financial sector, climate change has brought about new challenges.

Not only do the expected weather abnormalities, drought, mass movements

and famine put capital at risk in new ways, but also, and relatedly, new kinds

of opportunities emerge as regards the financialization of the biosphere on a

planetary scale. At the core of global finance is reinsurance. Reinsurance has

an infrastructure character in that it acts as a backup for the rest of the finan-

cial sector for which it pools, spreads, mitigates and redistributes risks. Its

principal function is to provide cover for traditional types of insurance con-

tracts, that is, to insure other forms of insurance. In relation to the challenges

brought about by climate change, the meta-position of reinsurance companies

is important: the information about risks and opportunities is condensed here,

at the top of the food chain of global capitalism. From this position, reinsur-

ance companies influence and shape the way in which the rest of the financial

world thinks about climate change.

In order to give climate change an existence as a matter of concern, an

enormous amount of work has been required, including the development of

technologies, scientific knowledge and the establishing of various sorts of

information networks.1 Among such networks, the Intergovernmental Panel

on Climate Change (IPCC) is the most widely known. It engages and involves

a huge number of scientists, and is able to influence governments’ and corpo-

rations’ agendas as regards measures taken. Other important actors include all

kinds of industries ranging from oil refinement, car manufacturing and plastic

to alternative energy sources, not to talk about lobbyists and non-governmen-

tal organizations that actively work the public opinion in one way or another.

Focusing on the reinsurance industry, I study yet another actor that glob-

ally shapes climate change as a political and economic issue, but has not

received the attention it deserves in this respect in the social scientific literature.2

I am especially interested in the ways in which reinsurance mediates the

appearance of climate change for other financial actors. Among multiple con-

nections that make climate change an object of political economy, the rein-

surance business is of particular importance. Following Bruno Latour and

others on this point, my emphasis is on studying how mediations are not

neutral and how they translate objects when making them present.3 The rein-

surance industry is a mediating body that gives climate change a shape and

presence; it objectifies and commodifies climate change as an uncertain phe-

nomenon, yet presents it as manageable, at least to an extent.

Although it is Latour and his colleagues who have made the concepts of

mediation and translation popular among social scientists, my theoretical