Early assessment of seasonal forage availability for mitigating the impact of drought on East African pastoralists

Author(s)
Vrieling, A.Meroni, M.Mude, A.G.Chantarat, S.Ummenhofer, C.C.Bie, C.A.J.M. de


Pastoralist households across East Africa face major livestock losses during drought periods that can cause persistent poverty. For Kenya and southern Ethiopia, an existing index insurance scheme aims to reduce the adverse effects of such losses. The scheme insures individual households through an area-aggregated seasonal forage scarcity index derived from remotely-sensed normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series. Until recently, insurance contracts covered animal losses and indemnity payouts were consequently made late in the season, based on a forage scarcity index incorporating both wet and dry season NDVI data. Season timing and duration were fixed for the whole area (March–September for long rains, October–February for short rains).

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