Founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR)

Paul Kovacs is founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western University. The Institute is a world-class, multi-disciplinary research centre based in Canada working with the insurance industry to identify best practices for society to adapt to climate extremes and build resilience to natural hazards.

Some of Paul’s international contributions includes work since 1996 as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; a member of the World Meteorology Organization’s Society and Economic Research and Applications Working Group (SERA); a contributor to UNESCO’s International Flood Initiative; host of the 2014 annual conference of the International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM); contributor to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR); and contributor to the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative.