Recently, the development and humanitarian relief communities have directed attention to building resilience of pastoral communities to droughts and other shocks. While resilience thinking has much to offer, using resilience as a framework for investing in disaster risk reduction and development faces numerous challenges. Development implies that people are actively changing, which poses the question of whether such changes are adaptations or transformations, or whether this is a subjective or academic distinction.

This study develops an index-based livestock insurance (IBLI) product for managing key livestock asset risks of pastoralists in the arid and semi-arid lands of northern Kenya, where insurance markets are effectively absent and uninsured risk exposure is a main cause of persistent poverty.

The Ethiopian Boran cattle evolved from the Borana pastoralists’ successful breeding strategiesunder the harsh conditions of arid rangelands. At present two types of this breed are known toexist in the Borana rangelands: the Qorti, or the typical Boran, and the Ayuna, its local variantwith smaller body weight and lesser demands on pasture. This paper illustrates the impact ofexternal interference on the maintenance of the Boran cattle breed in its original habitat.