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Good practice Imported

Seguro de Vida Verde — Insurance-Linked Mangrove Restoration in Barra de Santiago, El Salvador

El Salvador · Barra de Santiago · See the El Salvador profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 40% 47/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Since 2019, a private indemnity insurance product has paid coastal families in Barra de Santiago, El Salvador to restore mangroves: 8 ha replanted, 26,200 mangroves, ~1,892 tCO2 sequestered, 70 families employed; extended to SMEs in 2025.

8 hectares
Mangrove area restored (2019-2025)
26,200 trees
Mangroves planted (2019-2025)
1,892 tonnes CO2
Estimated CO2 sequestered (self-reported) (2019-2025)
70 families
Families employed (2019-2025)
Seguro de Vida Verde — Insurance-Linked Mangrove Restoration in Barra de Santiago, El Salvador

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Davivienda Seguros El Salvador / FUNDEMAS / AMBAS
Period
2019–ongoing (extended 2025)
Keywords
insurance, mangrove restoration, coastal resilience, disaster risk reduction

Context

Barra de Santiago is an 11,500-hectare Ramsar wetland on El Salvador's Pacific coast that has lost roughly 60% of its mangrove cover over the past 50 years, leaving coastal communities more exposed to storm surge, erosion and flooding. Since 2019, Davivienda Seguros El Salvador has run 'Seguro de Vida Verde' (Green Life Insurance), an indemnity-based insurance product developed with FUNDEMAS, GIZ, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN) and the local women's association AMBAS.

Activities

Payouts fund community members — 60% of them women — to grow and plant mangrove seedlings, with compensation tied to survival and growth outcomes. In 2025 Davivienda extended the model with a collective SME version of the insurance product.

Results

To date the programme has restored 8 hectares with 26,200 mangroves planted, sequestering an estimated 1,892 tonnes of CO2, and has provided paid work to 70 families. The CO2 figure is a self-reported estimate rather than an independently audited measurement, the 8 hectares restored are still a small fraction of the historic mangrove loss across the 11,500-hectare reserve, and no public data confirms long-term seedling survival rates beyond the initial planting.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — Funded as a commercial indemnity insurance product by Davivienda Seguros; no public total programme budget figure is available.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Running since 2019, extended to a collective SME product in 2025 — an ongoing, incrementally scaling initiative.
Staffing & skills
Davivienda Seguros El Salvador, private insurer running the product, FUNDEMAS, GIZ and Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN), technical partners, AMBAS, local women's association coordinating planting labour

Conditions for success

  • Outcome-linked payouts tied to seedling survival and growth rather than flat payments
  • Multi-sector partnership spanning a private insurer, development cooperation (GIZ), government and a local women's association
  • 60% of paid planting work goes to women, building durable local buy-in
  • Extension to a collective SME insurance product in 2025 shows a working path to scale

Common failure modes

  • 8 hectares restored is a small fraction of the historic mangrove loss across the 11,500-hectare reserve
  • No public data confirms long-term seedling survival beyond initial planting
  • The CO2 sequestration figure is self-reported, not independently audited

Where it fits

Governance type
private-sector product with NGO, government and development-cooperation partners
Scale
local/community (single Ramsar reserve)
Income level
lower-middle-income (El Salvador)

Commonly funded by

Own resources / municipal budget

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

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Data sources

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