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Could Climate Crisis Insurance Save El Salvador’s Waves?

Originally posted on SURFER | By Owen James Burke | Last updated Apr 14, 2026 1:37 PM ET

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Insuring ecosystems, environmental resources, and waves? What with intensifying tropical storms, ensuing flooding, and wrath on breaks and subsequent tourist attraction, it might make sense for a place like Las Flores and Punta Mango, and innumerable others, it’s not such a wild idea.

That particular stretch of coastline, dubbed Oriente Salvaje by the tourism association that developed the 12 or so miles along the Land of Volcanoes’ Pacific coast, rests “highly vulnerable to climate-related disruptions,” Rodrigo Barraza, an early developer, tells the Guardian. Apart from his small hotel and the dozens of other businesses that form the coalition, there are restaurants, commercial fisher folk, drone operators—and the community at large—who stand to lose much.

The surf that brings the hordes is, of course, the very surf that can undo the fanciful little shangri-la as storms the world round are wreaking more and more havoc.

In 2023, Barraza and co. teamed up with Save The Waves Coalition (STW), the international surfing nonprofit launched “by a ragtag group of international surfers who were watching their favorite surf breaks around the world get destroyed." STW designated Oriente Salvaje as one of its World Surfing Reserves as a locale with a “huge overlap between biodiversity and surf locations," according to STW CEO Nik Strong-Cvetich.

“Parametric insurance” is increasingly attracting property owners, commercial fisher folk, and farmers, but this is, according to the Guardian, the first time the model will be tested on surfing.

For STW, parametric insurance “became a weird obsession,” Strong-Cvetich says. “We scoured the world for places that were easily disrupted by a climate event and had a large dependence on the surf economy.”

Ever since, STW has been working with international insurance brokers Willis Towers Watson (WTW) to develop the highly bespoke financial model. As for the potential insurance payouts? The measurable trigger metric is rainfall, at least for this region, based upon 40 years of rainfall data, and payouts will coincide with “observable income loss” by anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand regional businesses.

Save The Waves is still vying for a payout strictly dedicated to ecosystem restoration. The organization’s local coordinator, Angelo Picardo, says “El Salvador is a developing country and we don’t have an insurance culture—people don’t even have health insurance—so there’s a lot of work you have to do on the ground to bring people on board.”

Premiums are another hurdle, but as the Salvadorian government channels millions of dollars into surf-tourism initiatives, vested surf-adjacent entities and residents are encouraged.

“Everybody’s positive. There’s nothing but good things to hear from this. We just hope that it turns out to be the best that it can be,” says Barraza.

Payout size, in true insurance biz form, is still TBD, lest anyone get any ideas about tampering with the weather, but STW is hoping to have a pilot underway by June, the rainy season along El Salvador’s Pacific coast. We’ll be watching…

This article first appeared on SURFER and was syndicated with permission.

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