While there has been no official declaration, famine has come to Somalia.
UN’s humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, said last week decried the injustice of the climate crisis-induced disaster.
“Nobody in Somalia is responsible for the catastrophe – this fourth failed rainy season, this fifth and sixth to come.”
At least 41% of Somalia’s population of nearly 16 million people will face acute food insecurity between now and December.
With Somalia on track for a fifth failed rainy season, there have been no crops in the fields for more than two years. Some people in El-Jaalle refugee camp say they will return to their farms when the rains come, but it is likely many of them will be stuck in the camp for years.
The situation is not uniformly catastrophic. Despite Somalia enduring its worst drought in four decades, the district of Afgoye remains green. In Afgoye, a town near the capital, Mogadishu, crops are still growing. While livestock die and crops fail in most other parts of the country, farmers here continue to grow food to sell in the capital but farmers are worried. They are not immune to the effects of the drought, which are being exacerbated by rising costs. The war in Ukraine and lingering supply-chain problems after the coronavirus pandemic have led to high inflation and shortages of essential items. They cannot afford to buy seeds, fertiliser or fuel to pump water from the river.
As one Afgoye farmer puts it: “Everybody is a loser in this situation.”
Falling water levels in the Shabelle River, which runs through Afgoye, have forced farmers to reassess what they plant.
“I cannot grow all my usual crops,” says Saida Mohamed Hassan, a farmer who lives in Afgoye with her husband and five children. “Although we are blessed compared with people living in other parts of Somalia, we face our own challenges.” Hassan is planning to grow fewer varieties of produce this season, forgoing water-hungry crops such as bananas and tomatoes. “I will only plant sesame, maize and watermelon,” she says. “I usually grow many different types of fruit and vegetables but they will shrivel and die.”
With its finances already stretched by the effects of drought and inflation, al-Shabaab has started demanding higher taxes to fund its war effort. The group is active in parts of Afgoye and has threatened to kill farmers and businesspeople if they do not pay the higher levy. The farmers are afraid that the fighting will spread to their fields. There has been an intensification in troop movements by the Somali National Army and al-Shabaab has stepped up attacks in the area in recent months.
Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, the presidential envoy for Somalia’s drought response says that countries such as Somalia were being left without support to face “the new climate reality”.
“If we had not had Ukraine, Covid and the locust invasion then the effect might be less, but the drought is caused by climate change. We have had four failed rainy seasons now. The cycle of drought used to be every 10 years, now it’s four years and soon it will be two years. That is not caused by Somalia – that was caused by the climate crisis.”
The international community was ignoring impending famine and failing to meet the longstanding pledge of letting poorer nations access an £87.5bn climate fund to mitigate the crisis.
“We are living with the deadly consequences of climate change in Somalia,” he said. “Millions of children are malnourished, many will die, and we don’t have one penny of that climate fund.” Abdishakur continued, “Everyone has been saying, ‘When you have famine declared you will have attention,’” he said. “We are facing more than the scale of 2011, when we lost a quarter of a million of our people. But in 2011 half the people died before famine was declared.”
Abdishakur said access to climate crisis funds would enable Somalia to bring in technology and infrastructure to support and build farming and fisheries.
“Somalians are resilient people. They cope with all the pressures of insecurity and drought, and the world can learn from them how to be resilient in the face of such pressure,” he said. “There is a strong sense of community and clan. The remittances from the Somalian diaspora going into the country are holding people up, families together – $2bn [£1.8bn] a year is sent home, more than any aid or donations.”
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