With the move of the Poverty, Gender and Impacts Team to the Markets, Gender and Livelihoods Theme we reviewed where best our work in Index-Based Livestock Insurance fitted within the ILRI research management structure. The discussions have centered around:-

a) how can the team be best supported to carry out their activities and generate the outputs and;

b) where are the greatest synergies to be realised.

It was concluded that it would be best to include Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) in People Livestock and the Environment (PLE) and in particular PLE2, which will consolidate much of our pastoral research in one team.   The  IBLI staff bring to PLE a set of skills that compliments the existing PLE Theme, while at the same time the IBLI research agenda benefit from some of the skills and experience in PLE.

Creating a larger and stronger research group working on improving resilience of pastoral systems will allow us to capitalise on the renewed interest from donors on pastoral systems and provide a string platform for expanding our research in this area.