A Dinka cattle camp at sunset in Abyei, Sudan (photo credit: UN photo/Tim McKulka). Here’s an interesting essay on the nature of human-livestock relations. It starts with a story of Emong, a Turkana herder, and his obsession with a bull, and quickly moves on to the ravages of drought in pastoral regions, Western concepts of nature … Continue reading
Category Archives: Pastoralism
Drought / East Africa / Ethiopia / Event / Food Security / ILRI / Insurance / Kenya / Pastoralism / Vulnerability
Pioneering insurance for remote livestock herders taking hold in drought-prone areas of Kenya and Ethiopia
Sake Dabasso Halake with her recent livestock insurance payout, which was made in northern Kenya’s Marsabit District following the great drought that afflicted the Horn of Africa in the latter half of 2011 (photo credit: Jeff Haskins/Burness Communications). Laurie Goering, a reporter for AlertNet writing from the United Nations climate change meetings in Durban this … Continue reading
Drought / East Africa / Event / Food Security / Geodata / ILRI / Insurance / Kenya / Pastoralism / Vulnerability
New insurance program in Kenya covers cattle lost to drought
A blind pastoral herder in Kenya’s Marsabit District awaits payout of an insurance premium he bought to protect his livestock against drought (photo on Flickr by Jeff Haskins). Tristan McConnell, reporting from Nairobi, writes in the GlobalPost (Boston) yesterday of a new insurance program set up to protect a group of pastoral livestock herders in … Continue reading
Animal Production / CCAFS / Environment / Ethiopia / ILRI / Livestock / Livestock Systems / Pastoralism / Report / Research / Vulnerability
Rangeland-based livestock production systems in the arid and semi-arid tropics
For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at ILRI, Augustine Ayantunde, Shirley Tarawali and Iain Wright prepared an issue brief on livestock challenges and opportunities in rangelands … Perceptions about arid and semi-arid pastoral regions are rapidly changing. They are no longer seen as livestock enterprises but as multiple use systems with important consequences for … Continue reading
Drought / Drylands / DRYLANDSCRP / East Africa / Event / Film and video / Food Security / ILRI / Insurance / Kenya / Pastoralism / Vulnerability
Insuring the never before insured: Kenyan herders get first drought payouts
Sake Dabasso Halake stands proudly in front of Equity Bank‘s Marsabit branch, clutching an envelope of 16,000 Kenya shillings (USD165) that she received as a payout on an insurance policy she earlier took out for her cows; she lost ten cows in a drought just ending that has hurt the livelihoods of thousands of livestock herders … Continue reading
Animal Production / Climate Change / ILRI / Livestock / Livestock Systems / Livestock-Water / Opinion piece / Pastoralism / Research / Vulnerability
Balancing efforts to address climate change, poverty, risk and uncertainty
For the November 2011 ‘liveSTOCK Exchange’ event at ILRI, Tom Thurow, Professor of Watershed Management at the University of Wyoming reflects on priorities for livestock systems research at ILRI… Climate Change While working in several Latin American countries this summer it struck me that many environmental management/regulation advances that these countries had been making a … Continue reading
Drought / East Africa / Event / ILRI / Insurance / Kenya / Pastoralism / UK / Vulnerability
Kenyan pastoralists benefit from unique livestock insurance
Children in Kenya’s Marsabit District pass one of thousands of carcasses of livestock that died in the drought in the Horn of Africa (photo on Flickr by Neil Palmer/CIAT). Voice of America reports today on ‘A new insurance program for poor livestock farmers in northern Kenya has made its first pay out to some 650 herders … Continue reading
Directorate / Drought / East Africa / Event / Food Security / ILRI / Insurance / Kenya / Pastoralism / UK / Vulnerability
Innovative livestock insurance scheme for remote Kenyan herders was dreamed up at Cornell
Jimmy Smith, director general of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), speaks at an event in Marsabit town, in northern Kenya, where several hundred livestock herders were given payouts for livestock insurance that they took out earlier (photo on Flickr by Neil Palmer/CIAT). ‘In the midst of a drought-induced food crisis affecting millions in the … Continue reading
Drought / Drylands / DRYLANDSCRP / East Africa / Event / Food Security / Geodata / ILRI / Insurance / Kenya / Pastoralism / Vulnerability
Satellite images trigger insurance payouts to poor livestock herders in Kenya’s northern dryland frontier
Andrew Mude (right), a scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), in Nairobi, Kenya, explains the livestock insurance payouts made last week to resource-poor livestock herders in Kenya’s Marsabit District in the wake of a great drought in the Horn of Africa that dried up the available forage on Marsabit’s rangelands and caused the … Continue reading
Drought / East Africa / Event / Film and video / Food Security / Geodata / ILRI / Insurance / Kenya / Pastoralism / Vulnerability
News agency interviews herders who received drought insurance payouts in Kenya’s Marsabit District
Insurance payouts for Kenyan drought victims, posted 26 Oct 2011 by Agence France Press TV: Runtime 2:06. Agence France Presse TV has posted on YouTube an interesting 2-minute video piece on the first-ever insurance payments made to pastoral herders in northern Kenya’s remote Marsabit Dictrict, following a great drought in the Horn of Africa that … Continue reading
ILRI Clippings 