What are the environmental
impacts of IBLI?
• Index‐based livestock insurance (IBLI) important
approach to address crucial source of livelihood risk to
pastoralists on the arid and semi‐arid lands (ASALs).
• However, policymakers and implementing partners have
been concerned about systemic effects of introducing
IBLI.
• In particular, could IBLI induce increased herd
accumulation and more intensive grazing patterns, in a
fragile ecosystem?

What are the environmental
impacts of IBLI?
Grant: The Human and Environmental Impacts of
Migratory Pastoralism in Arid and Semi‐arid East Africa,
Australia Development Research Awards Scheme 2012
(ADRAS) by Dept. of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australia.
Key partners include Cornell University, ILRI, and US Dept
of Agriculture.
Core team includes computer scientists, economists, and
rangeland scientists.

What are the environmental
impacts of IBLI?
Two key aspects:
1. Better understanding how pastoralists choose where
and when to move their livestock
2. Studying how these might change in presence of Index‐
Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI)
“This project seeks to generate a number of policy‐relevant
results on the feedbacks between migrant pastoralism and
the environment, including addressing the impacts of new
index insurance products.”

How do pastoralists choose
where and when to move their
livestock?
Determinants of Migration

Where would you move?
• ASAL pastoralists face regular dry seasons in which they
migrate to remote water and forage locations.
• Migrate dozens or even hundreds of kilometres.
• How do pastoralists decide where to move?
Face tradeoffs between
• Distance (energy costs for animals)
• Availability of water
• Availability of forage
• Security risks
• Etc…

Where would you move?
village
?
?
?

Understanding movement
choices is important for policy
• Many policy and investment choices have spatial aspects:
e.g., land use policy, constructing waterpoints, providing
access to food aid or market opportunities, etc.
• When it comes to movement, margins of adjustment are
very discrete.
“This project seeks to generate a number of policy‐relevant
results on the feedbacks between migrant pastoralism
and the environment, including addressing the impacts of
new index insurance products.”

It is not trivial to measure
movement choices
• Pastoralists cover vast distances, over inaccessible
terrain.
• Most existing work based on self‐reported movements.
• Measurement innovation: team includes expertise in
satellite‐based measurement of livestock movements
through GPS collars.
• Collect location at 5‐minute intervals.

GPS Collars

Several Globules of
Concentrated Use
High Potential for
Environmental Impact
Linear, Trailing Features
Limited Foraging Extent
Each Globule
Centered Around
a Watering Point.
Globular
Movement Pattern

Further augmenting the GPS
collar data
• Household characteristics (household surveys,
implemented by ILRI teams)
• Locations of resources
• Forage (satellite data on NDVI)
• Water (various methods to construct maps of waterpoint
locations)
• This allows us to pull together these data sources for
analysis.

Availability of resources

Selection of resources

Making Sense of the Data:
models needed!
• In order to make sense of the data, our team has been
applying a number of modelling approaches.
• A model allows us to understand how pastoralists trade
off (1) distance, (2) resources (water, forage), etc.
• Well‐fitted models can also allow us to make policy
predictions:
• How would herd movements change in response to policy
interventions such as IBLI, waterpoint construction, changes in
food distribution, conflict reduction, etc.?
• How would herd movements change in response to changes in
environment (e.g., climate)?

Findings so far (Ermon et al,
2015)
• Current paper primarily considers the choice of
pastoralists over which (remote) satellite camp to locate
at.
• We can explain movement choices with a relatively
simple model (few variables).
• Results intuitive, e.g., herders are especially sensitive to
movement distance.
• Potential to leverage this kind of model to conduct other
policy simulations.

How does IBLI change livestock
movement choices?
Environmental Spillovers

How does having IBLI change
things?
1. Will access to IBLI change herd size?
• Assumption that movement by larger herds will lead to greater
environmental (vegetation) degradation.
1. Will access to IBLI change herd movement patterns?
• Assumption that more intensive movement will lead to greater
environmental (vegetation) degradation.
“This project seeks to generate a number of policy‐relevant
results on the feedbacks between migrant pastoralism and
the environment, including addressing the impacts of new
index insurance products.”

Why would we expect
behaviours to change?
• In principle, because IBLI is index‐based, it should
remove concerns about moral hazard, and it should
reduce the need to self‐insure through livestock
(“precautionary savings”).
• However …
1. Insurance, in a setting with few investment
opportunities, makes livestock a more attractive
investment, by changing the risk profile.
2. Movement effort may serve as costly self‐insurance, an
incentive which IBLI may reduce.
3. People may misunderstand how insurance works.

Time
Livestock
Drought Drought
Herd sizes follow boom‐and‐
bust cycles between normal
weather and shocks due to
drought

Time
Livestock
Drought Drought
Weather index insurance
could flatten out this cycle

What we do (Toth et al, 2014)
• Identify impacts of IBLI on herd accumulation and herd
movement by randomizing the provision of IBLI amongst
pastoralist communities in southern Ethiopia.
• Measure herd size and movement over 2011‐2015 using
GPS collars, household surveys, and complementary
data.
• Compare herd sizes and movement patterns (e.g.,
distance travelled) in households with and without IBLI.

Findings: herd accumulation
• We find that cattle herd sizes increase: about 7 cows for
the average herd size of 30.
• We find that the effect is significantly stronger for
individuals who score higher on an index of baseline
understanding of IBLI.
• This is a net effect, not offset by reductions in other
livestock (camels, shoats, etc).
 Increase in asset attractiveness seems to dominate
precautionary savings for households who best understand
IBLI.

Findings: movement
• We find that herd movement becomes more intensive
and concentrated: average distance moved decreases by
3‐5%.
• This is further strengthened for greater understanding of
IBLI.
• Households visit less waterpoints and spend more time
at a given waterpoint.
 Could suggest that IBLI substitutes for precautionary
movement effort.

What does it mean?
• Results are consistent with emerging work from Kenya
being conducted by colleagues: IBLI may lead to a
decrease in herd size in the short run, but an increase in
the long run.
• However, there are significant caveats:
• Small sample sizes
• Working with populations very early in experience curve with IBLI
• Many margins of adjustment as program scales (internal and
external)
 Something to keep tracking as IBLI scales