This blog is based on the seventh chapter of the newly published book Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Development edited by Ian Scoones.
Insurance is often proposed as a way of offsetting risks and responding to disasters. Index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) has been offered to pastoralists in Borana zone in southern Ethiopia over the past few years. This aims to pay-out before the disaster strikes based on a predictive assessment of the season derived from satellite-based estimates of livestock forage availability. It sounds like a good solution, but does it work and for whom? Livestock insurance has a number of assumptions embedded in the design. These include that the coming season can be reliably predicted; that the effects play out uniformly over an area; that the drought strikes as a single event and that livestock are held individually and responses are individualised.
This article is from PASTRES, a research programme that aims to learn from pastoralists about responding to uncertainty and resilience, with lessons for global challenges. PASTRES is co-hosted by IDS.
