Livestock Insurance to Combat Food Crisis, November 2011

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Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT

View of northern Kenya from the air. Northern Kenya has been affected by the now infamous Horn of Africa drought, which triggered a food crisis affecting around 13 million people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.
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Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT

A livestock carcass in Marsabit, in northern Kenya. The fact that the food crisis in the Horn was the result of a livestock crisis has been well documented. A major pastoralist zone, when vegetation for grazing began to dry-up and livestock started to die, the knock-on effects on farmer livelihoods became strikingly clear.
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Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT

When the animals die, the people suffer. Food aid makes up 15 percent of the economy of northern Kenya's Marsabit District. The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) estimates that livestock trade is responsible for about 65 percent of the money coming into households.
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Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT

About 600 herders in signed up for insurance policies in Marsabit District to protect herders and their livestock investments from drought losses.
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Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT

The ILRI director general, Jimmy Smith, speaks to residents of Marsabit. The Index-based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) is an example of a market-based, climate-smart innovation that could gain much wider currency in Africa and beyond. Its now at the end of its second year.
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Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT

A village meeting in Dirib Gombo for farmers who took out livestock insurance to receive their first payout after a prolonged drought in the region.
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Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT

What triggers a payout is not how many livestock die, but whether satellite images confirm that forage availability in the regions rangelands has dropped below a certain level. When this happens, farmers who took out insurance get paid.
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Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT

A village meeting in Dirib Gombo for farmers who took out livestock insurance to receive their first payout after a prolonged drought in the region.
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Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT

Some of the farmers received their payouts, others were frustrated that they had taken out insurance in the year the scheme was launched, and despite losing animals, had received no payout because the forage threshold was never breached. They decided not to renew their policies and then the drought hit.
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Credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT

The experience of the insurance scheme shows that no one intervention addresses all problems. As successful as it has been for many who lost animals and livelihoods, others would have needed additional help.