University of Sussex Researcher Describes New Findings in Livestock Insurance (Uncertainty in the drylands: Rethinking in/formal insurance from pastoral East Africa): Livestock Insurance

2023 JUN 13 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Data detailed on livestock insurance have been presented. According to news reporting originating from the University of Sussex by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Amidst climatic and economic volatility, agricultural development and climate adaptation policies have increasingly turned to weather microinsurance to manage uncertainties, particularly in dryland pastoral and agricultural settings.”

Funders for this research include Vetenskapsradet; H2020 European Research Council.

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from University of Sussex: “While the political embrace of insurance has been cause for concern amongst those who fear insurance will undermine embedded coping mechanisms and moral economies, economists have puzzled over low insurance adoption rates amongst target populations. This article argues for an approach that scrutinizes insurance in relation to dynamic social practices and norms for responding to uncertainty. We employ this approach to investigate pastoralists’ encounters with index-based livestock insurance in Northern Kenya and Southern Ethiopia. Drawing on interview, ethnographic, and survey data, we demonstrate how insurance is understood within larger moral economies and collective imaginaries for living with and managing uncertainty in the drylands. Relational understandings shape pastoralists’ participation in risk-sharing arrangements, collective and individual decisions about livestock insurance purchase, and eventual uses of insurance payouts.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “Payouts also support a broad array of social reproductive purposes and investments in social and political life. As we conclude, these findings upset the binary between formal and informal insurance, revealing how “formal” index insurance must be negotiated with embedded social affiliations, rights, obligations, and understandings of uncertainty.”

For more information on this research see: Uncertainty in the drylands: Rethinking in/formal insurance from pastoral East Africa. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2023. The publisher for Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space is SAGE Publications.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x231168396.

Our news editors report that more information may be obtained by contacting Tahira Shariff Mohamed, PASTRES, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, United Kingdom. Additional authors for this research include Leigh Johnson, Ian Scoones, Masresha Taye.

ORCID is an identifier for authors and includes bibliographic information. The following is ORCID information for the authors of this research: Leigh Johnson (http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7296-4296), Masresha Taye (http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5008-4543).

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