Weather trading in London: Distinguishing finance from gambling

In the 2005 film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, weather derivatives trading is introduced as an innovation that had people wondering whether it was ‘good science or science fiction’. Enron had become famous as an organisation that promoted innovative financial products. The company’s tagline to become ‘the world’s leading company’ rather than just an energy company highlighted its primary ambition to create new markets in a wide variety of products and sell financial services to clients. As Clover (2003: 30) puts it: ‘Suddenly the business was running on a platform of intellectual capital’ rather than things like gas pipelines and power stations. Financial products emerged in broadband, energy services, bankruptcy risk and weather

How food-system resilience is undermined by the weather : the case of the Rama Indigenous group, Nicaragua

Climate change is likely to increase both the extent of seasonal weather variation and the magnitude of extreme weather events. The food security of those living in poorer countries and in poorer communities will be disproportionately affected by this change in weather patterns. We explored how the heterogeneity that exists within the Rama Indigenous community (Nicaragua) interacts with seasonal weather variation and extreme weather events to adversely affect food-system resilience. Firstly, we show that there are different levels of food system resilience between the Rama who fish using the traditional methods of hand nets and paddle-powered canoes, and those that can afford gill nets and motorboats. Secondly, there are significant differences in the way Rama farmers respond to threats to their food security: some rely on short-term resilience-based strategies, whereas others focus on more transitional responses. These differences contribute to short-term inequalities in food security and are also likely to have a differential impact on the future food-system resilience of the Rama community. More research at the household scale is vital for understanding how to improve food-system resilience for the most vulnerable populations without introducing policies that are unsustainable and/or curtail future options

Making data flow for the climate risk market

In 2011, the U.K. government announced that the national meteorological agency would be releasing a significant volume of data as part of its Open Data policy agenda. This article explores the interrelationship between this announcement and efforts to boost the competitiveness of the United Kingdom’s weather derivatives industry. Primary qualitative data are analyzed to produce a genealogical account of these policy developments, and Braman’s concept of “informational power” is used to frame a critical narrative of the broader dynamics of power at play. We argue that although there have been significant tensions around efforts to open the United Kingdom’s weather data, these have largely been absorbed by and, ultimately, contained within the hegemonic structures of the United Kingdom’s neoliberal state. We conclude by arguing that this struggle needs to be broadened and externalized beyond the state so that critical questions about the deepening data-driven financialization of climate change can be addressed

Firm finances, weather derivatives and geography

This paper considers some intellectual, practical and political dimensions of collaboration between human and physical geographers exploring how firms are using relatively new financial products – weather derivatives – to displace any costs of weather-related uncertainty and risk. The paper defines weather derivatives and indicates how they differ from weather insurance products before considering the geo-political, cultural and economic context for their creation. The paper concludes by reflecting on the challenges of research collaboration across the human–physical geography divide and suggests that while such initiatives may be undermined by a range of institutional and intellectual factors, conversations between physical and human geographers remain and are likely to become increasingly pertinent. The creation of a market in weather derivatives raises a host of urgent political and regulatory questions and the confluence of natural and social knowledges, co-existing within and through the geography academy, provides a constructive and creative basis from which to engage with this new market and wider discourses of uneven economic development and climate change

Firms finance and the weather: the UK weather derivatives market

The spectre of climate change is motivating businesses to evaluate the weather sensitivity of their operations and earnings. Persistent changes in day-to-day weather, such as a warmer than average winter, may prove very costly for businesses and since 1997 a new financial market has grown up around the mitigation of these day-to-day weather risks. This weather derivatives market has expanded from being a small US energy product to become a $45.2 billion industry by 2006. In the process this commodification of weather indexes is re-valuing meteorological data, forecasts and expertise, as well as changing the ways in which firms have traditionally considered weather as unmanageable. This thesis presents an empirical examination of the weather derivatives market, particularly focusing upon the UK, drawing upon in-depth interviews with market participants. Setting this within the context of current theories in human geography and science studies, the research also illustrates the material and discursive implications weather derivatives are having not just on firms and meteorology, but also climate change policies

Climate change pathology

There is no abstract for this paper.