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

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

Read the full analysis: https://www.naturanceproject.eu/community-led-mangrove-restoration-through-green-life-insurance-seguro-de-vida-verde/