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A drought-displaced girl pinches her nose as she walks past the rotting carcasses of goats that died of hunger and thirst on the outskirts of Dollow, Somalia, April 14, 2022. Credit – Sally Hayden—SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
More than a million people have been displaced by drought in Somalia, according to staggering figures released by the UN Refugee Agency and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). Most of them, some 775,000, have been displaced this year as the country of another 16 million people face a drought that began in January 2021. It is the worst Somalia has experienced in decades, forcing others in rural areas to flee to cities in search of food and water.
For a country already facing a three-decade civil war and political instability, the environmental disaster has had devastating consequences. Harvests are poor while millions of cattle die, as drought paralyzes the main source of income for 80% of the population. the population, leaving another five million people in danger of starvation. The U. N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Adam Abdelmoula, said in June that thousands of Somalis had been killed.
But as famine looms amid warnings of a failed fifth rainy season in the coming months, the world will most likely look elsewhere. Experts tell TIME that in addition to seeing drought as a domestic problem, the foreign network deserves to see it as one more omen to come: that the climate emergency will continue to have disproportionate effects on countries. of the South and endanger global security.
“We now have a weather regime [in Somalia] that is erratic, with less rain in the last decade and flooding when it rains,” says Mohamed Abdi, NRC’s country director in Somalia. “And climate substitution means the scenario will only get worse. “. “
The war in Ukraine only exacerbates the crisis. In 2020, Somalia imported cereals worth $17. 7 million, 90% of which came from Russia and Ukraine. The disruption of cereal materials caused by the war has driven up food prices, making it more difficult to upgrade food that was previously provided through cattle with wheat. The number of other people facing crisis starvation levels is expected to exceed 7 million through September, according to Relief Web International.
According to Claire McConnell, policy adviser for international meteorological relations at the London-based think tank E3G, the war in Ukraine highlights a food security crisis that has been going on for years. “Many countries in the South were already suffering with the costs of some commodities, partly due to supply chain disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, but more commonly due to climate effects on crop-producing countries,” she says.
The drought in Somalia as the climate crisis acts as a “threat multiplier,” McConnell says, affecting human life, livelihoods, agriculture, industry and even national security.
Meanwhile, activists are exploiting the drought to control the East African nation. Al-Qaeda’s allies, al-Shabab, control vast swaths of the countryside in central and southern Somalia, making an estimated 900,000 Somalis in need of help inaccessible to foreign organizations. Activists have allegedly demanded payment from aid agencies to distribute food and take credit for materials to bolster rural support.
U. S. President Joe Biden in May ordered the return of some 500 troops to the fight against al-Shabab, after the election of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as Somalia’s president ended a political vacuum of more than a year.
Read more: Why Biden is redeploying troops in Somalia
E3G’s McConnell makes a comparison to the emerging Arabs of 2011, where emerging food costs due to political instability and excessive weather triggered a wave of social unrest.
And the crisis will only get worse as long as the foreign network looks the other way, Abdi says. “Although as humanitarian organizations we have been talking about this for months, the resources have been a long time coming,” he adds. promised another $476 million in aid to Somalia in July, but the UN said it needed $1. 5 billion for other people from hunger and poverty.
Experts say long-term investment in the Global South is as vital as short-term aid, as climate change accelerates the frequency and intensity of those environmental crises. Somalia “needs investment for communities to build resilience,” Abdi adds, “to grow crops that are resilient to excessive weather and build water infrastructure in case the rainy season fails. “
The 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November will verify commitments made through rich countries at last year’s COP26 conference, McConnell said. “Many local communities [in the Global South] already have some of the skills and wisdom to adapt to some of those climate impacts, but lack the investment or help to scale them up. “
But the millions of Somalis facing famine cannot wait until then. “If we don’t do anything in the coming weeks and months, I’m afraid we may not see more deaths,” Abdi says. “Somalia has become the forgotten crisis, and the global will have to pay attention to it. “