Elisabeth Meze-Hausken

Climate Researcher

Ms Meze-Hausken has previously worked as a researcher at the University of Bergen at the Department of Geography. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Bergen, a Master in Business from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and a Master of Science in Climate Change from the University of Norwich, UK.

Her activities involve risk mapping of natural hazards, investigating and developing of strategies within climate adaptation, communication of climate risk, as well as applied research within an EU-funded international project on “Climate change and the insurance industry” (CCII).

"I am consultant for Gjensidige Insurance in Norway in various climate change issues. I am a mixture of a climate researcher, economist and geographer, and I have my background from how society deals with climate and weather in two of the most extreme climate regions in the world, drought prone Ethiopia and western Norway with heavy rainfall. Understanding how people cope with these somehow extreme - but for the region relatively normal - weather conditions may be of importance when helping other geographical areas which may experience such conditions under climate change of how to adapt most successfully.

My interest has been and still is – related to how people actually perceive climate change and deal with risk, how to communicate best possible adaptation strategies to society, and how to deal with uncertainty about how climate will develop in the future.

Gjensidige Insurance has its main task of being an insurance provider, and as such, insuring their customers also against climate risk. In order to cover climate risk in an economically responsible way, may it be due to rainfall, wind, snow, we need to have knowledge about the future, in order to provide our clients with information and advise about mitigation and adaptation strategies. As such, we have been for several years involved in research. There, we have been mapping past and future climate risk of our customer portefolio , meaning of the buildings insured, based on scenarios of a warmer and wetter climate in Norway, and we include both normal “bad” weather and extreme weather.

Gjensidige is taking climate issues very seriously; still, we cannot proceed alone. Thus, Gjensidige hopes for efficient collaboration within the whole insurance sector, in order to have more strength in policy interventions concerning laws and regulations for buildings and spatial planning, as well as education.

Using common sense for adapting society to climate change and being prepared also for the unforeseen means that a healthy precautionary response is something which results in benefits for society EVEN if certain geographic regions may be spared by climate change".