Why Somalia needs long-term planning to battle the crippling climate crisis

With two children – four and two – cradled in her arms, Caasho Axmed Cali walked for five days to reach the Buul-dooy refugee camp in Baidoa, Somalia.

It was last November, and Cali, 40, was desperate to get out of their village, Misaajidkii eel-jeethow in Bakool, one of the many regions ravaged by successive droughts and facing acute food shortages in the African country.

Today, Cali is among an estimated 2.5 million climate refugees in Somalia, living in camps for internally displaced people (IDPs).

“Drought killed our animals and forced us to flee,” Caasho tells TRT World, painfully recalling the death of over 100 goats, some of whom she remembers by name.

She had to leave her husband and their three older children as she made the 150–km trek along with another woman and her three children from the same village.

Five consecutive failed rainy seasons have left half of Somalia’s estimated 16 million people in urgent need of aid, the United Nations said earlier this year, although parts of the country last year avoided an official famine declaration that some experts had been expecting.

Last year, the country saw “43,000 excess deaths” as the human-induced climate crisis intensified the frequency and severity of droughts and consequent food insecurity.

And internal conflicts – some localised and others widespread – have exacerbated the crisis, like the violence unleashed by the Al Shabab terror group, which controls large swathes of territories in the southern regions of the Horn of Africa country.

The Bay, Gedo and Bakool regions in Somalia’s south are the worst hit by the ongoing drought.

Rising temperatures, changing rain patterns, and more extreme weather is causing repetitive droughts, threatening food security and risking internal conflicts.

Growing crisis

Somalia is the second most climate-vulnerable country globally, although it “contributes (only) 0.03% to greenhouse gas emissions”. Chad is at the top spot.

The ‘Gu’ rainy season in Somalia, which runs from April to June, is crucial for supporting agricultural activity and replenishing water and pasture.

The country, however, experienced five consecutive failed or below-normal rainfall seasons, leading to drought conditions in most parts of Somalia with sectoral consequences.

The drier-than-normal conditions have led to vegetation wilting and killed millions of livestock that are critical for people’s lives. The drought has destroyed crops and reduced farming productivity throughout the country.

The Shabelle and Jubba–the two major rivers–saw reduced water flow or even dried up during the drought, severely impacting livelihoods and food supply.

The country is already grappling with high inflation and soaring food prices due to the ongoing Ukraine conflict.

Violent clashes over the limited grazing or agricultural lands in the agro-pastoral areas of the country have also led to the loss of lives and persistent communal tensions.

The Al Shabab terror group is a major contributing factor to the growing crisis.

The group has banned humanitarian organisations from operating in the areas it controls, denying critical aid to reach affected communities.

The Somali government recently launched a military operation against the Al Shabab, taking the conflict deeper into rural areas.

As a punitive measure against local communities, the group destroys properties and critical water infrastructure in areas it loses or fears it might lose to government forces.

According to a recent report by the World Weather Attribution initiative, human-induced climate crisis "has made events like the current drought much stronger and more likely; a conservative estimate is that such droughts have become about 100 times more likely”.

Road ahead

Adam Aw Hirsi, Somalia’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, tells TRT World that the country “needs to invest in climate-friendly mega projects such as water harvesting dams and catchments and mangrove forests.”

These programmes, he adds, “will reverse the environment degradation and climate fury on the one hand, and help with food security and employment on the other”.

These initiatives, however, require investing in capacity-building and skills development initiatives, including training programmes on water conservation, sustainable natural resource management, and disaster preparedness.

Communities in Somalia have valuable traditional knowledge and adaptation strategies developed over generations to cope with drought and other environmental challenges.

Moreover, empowering local organisations and creating is central to building community resilience.

Abdullahi Osman, CEO of Hormuud Salaam Foundation—Somalia’s first corporate foundation— tells TRT World that inclusive and participatory decision-making processes that involve Somali organisations, particularly the private sector, are essential for the response.

He says that Hormuud addresses the climate problem in Somalia by investing in clean energy, discouraging deforestation and “offering climate-related scholarships to students so that they can lead and implement crisis responses.”

Experts also advocate a widespread public awareness campaign on the severe threat the climate crisis poses to development and economic prosperity as one way to tackle the problem.

These campaigns, they say, could specifically target the dangers of deforestation and land degradation, calling for reducing natural resource destruction, such as cutting trees for charcoal, which is causing desertification, further conflict over natural resources and displacement.

A primary target of the campaign could be the dangers of logging for domestic household use or economic purposes. In recent years, the country has seen largescale tree-felling for charcoal due to the sharp rise in gas prices.

Experts note the rising demand is leading to unsustainable practices and furthering the climate-induced drought crisis.

Excessive logging of trees for charcoal production leaves the soil exposed to erosion and degradation, thereby reducing soil fertility, compromising agricultural productivity and exacerbating the drought impacts.

Additionally, many local communities in Somalia, including farmers and livestock pastoralists, rely on trees for their livelihoods. Unsustainable logging depletes these resources and leads to rain failure, effectively jeopardising the livelihoods of local communities and exacerbating poverty and vulnerability.

Building resilience in communities to adapt to shocks is globally regarded as one of the most effective approaches to addressing the climate crisis.

Accelerated climate funding

During a recent visit to Somalia, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters in Mogadishu that “it is unconscionable that Somalis, who have done almost nothing to create the climate crisis, are suffering its terrible impact.”

This mirrors what President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud of Somalia said at the COP27 gathering late last year. “What is evident is that there is no equity or fairness in global climate burden sharing because the nations who produce the least greenhouse gas emissions like Somalia, pay the highest price twice.”

The statements indicate not only the severity of the crisis but a persistent lack of access to climate funding hampers efforts to ensure climate equity, justice and just transition in this troubled nation.

Ambassador Gamal Hassan, Director of IGAD Center of Excellence for Climate Adaptation & Environmental Protection, notes that the country “received $ 17.4 million out of the $ 42.7 billion given by Green Climate Fund since it began climate finance.”

Therefore, it is imperative to improve—and prioritise—climate financing for Somalia for practical action that reduces vulnerability to drought and enhances the country's capacity to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Equally important is loss and damage financing, which recognises that specific climate impacts may lead to losses and damages that cannot be prevented or fully mitigated.

In the case of Somalia, recurrent droughts over the years resulted in irreparable damage to livelihoods and infrastructure, leading to long-term socio-economic impacts.

Climate FDI

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is a widely-recognised vehicle for tackling the climate crisis in terms of supporting sustainable economic development in countries that are more prone to the effects of rising temperatures.

Somalia is currently seeking–and posed to experience–increased FDI as the country gradually recovers from decades of insecurity and political instability. The Somali government has enacted laws to improve its business environment to attract favourable FDI.

Climate FDI is one of the most critical private capital flows that encourage investment in sustainable economic activities that are less dependent on natural resources and have a lower carbon footprint.

Consequently, it helps reduce the reliance on climate-sensitive sectors and supports the development of resilient and climate-smart industries that can withstand the challenges of drought and climate change.

Mohamed Dubo, Director of Somalia’s national investment promotion agency, believes climate FDI is one of the available policy tools to address the drought crisis effectively.

A potential investment target is “the infrastructure sector which is the most durable national investment to tackle the effects of climate change and extreme weather.”

Rather than depending on the rainfall for agriculture and animal feeding, such an initiative will involve investing in climate-smart techniques, such as underground water.

Abdinor Dahir, the Managing Director of Taloford Consulting Group, a Mogadishu-based strategy and development consulting firm, says that Somalia's “investment priority sectors include those tackling climate change as part of the National Development Plan. These include renewable energy and water management practices that would increase resilience and economic growth”.

Another area for climate investment is the insurance sector. In Somalia, repetitive droughts force farmers and pastoralists to abandon their livelihood practices and effectively become climate refugees.

According to Dubo, one way to build resilience in nomadic communities is to create insurance for their livestock, which requires significant investment since the sector is the leading income generator in the country.

Additionally, the communities should be encouraged to turn to sustainable practices of livestock farming, such as becoming farmers rather than herders.

In Somalia, most of the livestock are kept by nomadic pastoralists who move around in search of rangeland resources in the form of free grazing, now threatened by climate-induced droughts.

Therefore, establishing animal farms that do not need rangeland could be a good alternative.

With these initiatives, according to Abdinor, Somalia can respond to the ‘threat multiplier’ effect of the climate crisis rather than short-term firefighting.