Sovereign catastrophe risk transfer in Asia faces barriers

World Bank has successfully run out programmes in the Caribbean and Mexico but so far not in peril-prone South-east Asia

Take away batik and ketchup and Indonesia's contribution to the English language is pretty scant – but one word that every English speaker knows is Krakatoa. When that volcanic island, tucked between Java and Sumatra, exploded in 1883 the sound was heard nearly 5,000 kilometres away and 36,000 people are estimated to have died in the resulting series of tsunamis.

The Krakatoa eruption is famous because of its size and rarity – but the region it inhabits continues to be plagued by natural