Eco-insurance a must in Argentina

Argentine officials have declared their government the first in the world to require that companies engaged in potentially hazardous activities buy insurance to cover environmental damage. They noted that preliminary figures show that about 35,000 companies would have to comply with the new rules, Reuters reported.
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The law requiring eco-insurance was passed by Argentina’s Congress in 2002 but was not implemented until last month. The insurance policies will range in price from 120,000 pesos (US$36,090) a year to 50 million pesos (US$15 million), depending on a company’s activities, output and the potential risk involved.

 

“Argentina is taking a leadership role in the region on this issue,” Sergio Chodos, an undersecretary at the Environment Secretariat, told Reuters. “There’s a lot of environmental insurance sold in Europe, but it’s not obligatory because it doesn’t have to be. In Argentina, lawmakers understood that this had to be made obligatory.”

 

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