DOI: 10.4324/9781003157571-4
3 Indexing the soil
Olli Hasu and Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen
Introduction: A close reading of a programmatic
document by the World Bank
How is the future of the soil financialised? In this chapter we look into a
technology, index insurance, that promises to make the productivity of the
earth and its uncertainties manageable. Index insurance is a tool that in
the build-up phase of its design takes into account a wide variety of heterogeneous variables, such as the broad environmental system in an area, its
historical weather conditions and their changes, and the social conditions
in which the soil is processed; yet, it ends up abstracting most of these variables in favour of a streamlined economic model that concentrates on the
likelihood of payouts. What is thus produced is a dynamic tool for translating local agricultural conditions so they can be assessed from the point
of view of global financial markets that can subsequently intervene in local
processes from afar.
Our study contributes to research about the financialisation of natural
environments, which refers to the assetisation of ecological metrics, such as
extreme weather event and carbon emission data, and to the growing influence of finance in guiding political governance (Chiapello 2020; Goodman
& Anderson 2020; Langley 2020; Ouma et al. 2018). We focus specifically
on an index insurance risk model that uses environmental data to design a
social infrastructure for governing weather-related hazards. The rules and
principles established in the modelling process constitute a technical methodology for perceiving risks in ecological systems. Through this methodology, index insurance not merely represents natural phenomena but rather
generates governable environments as an assemblage of four elements: soil,
information-technology, financial risk modelling, and social coordination.
In this way, index insurance provides a case study on how finance mediates
ecological environments into socioeconomic constructions.
Weather-related forms of insurance have in recent years gained growing
attention among social scientists. Indeed, there already exists a relatively
large body of research discussing how climate change adaptation and mitigation are pursued through different kinds of insurance instruments (Angeli
3 Indexing the soil
Olli Hasu and Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen
Introduction: A close reading of a programmatic
document by the World Bank
How is the future of the soil financialised? In this chapter we look into a
technology, index insurance, that promises to make the productivity of the
earth and its uncertainties manageable. Index insurance is a tool that in
the build-up phase of its design takes into account a wide variety of heterogeneous variables, such as the broad environmental system in an area, its
historical weather conditions and their changes, and the social conditions
in which the soil is processed; yet, it ends up abstracting most of these variables in favour of a streamlined economic model that concentrates on the
likelihood of payouts. What is thus produced is a dynamic tool for translating local agricultural conditions so they can be assessed from the point
of view of global financial markets that can subsequently intervene in local
processes from afar.
Our study contributes to research about the financialisation of natural
environments, which refers to the assetisation of ecological metrics, such as
extreme weather event and carbon emission data, and to the growing influence of finance in guiding political governance (Chiapello 2020; Goodman
& Anderson 2020; Langley 2020; Ouma et al. 2018). We focus specifically
on an index insurance risk model that uses environmental data to design a
social infrastructure for governing weather-related hazards. The rules and
principles established in the modelling process constitute a technical methodology for perceiving risks in ecological systems. Through this methodology, index insurance not merely represents natural phenomena but rather
generates governable environments as an assemblage of four elements: soil,
information-technology, financial risk modelling, and social coordination.
In this way, index insurance provides a case study on how finance mediates
ecological environments into socioeconomic constructions.
Weather-related forms of insurance have in recent years gained growing
attention among social scientists. Indeed, there already exists a relatively
large body of research discussing how climate change adaptation and mitigation are pursued through different kinds of insurance instruments (Angeli