Somalia’s climate crisis

In 2023 Somalia’s worst drought on record came to an end but was swiftly followed by severe floods. In a single year the weather lurched from one extreme to the other, demonstrating how exposed the country is to the impact of climate change.

Tens of thousands of people and millions of livestock perished in the drought of 2021-23, while millions of people saw their agricultural livelihoods decimated. The 2023 floods adversely affected 2.5 million people, driving 1.2 million from their homes.

Somalia is ranked as the seventh-most climate-vulnerable nation on earth by the authoritative University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation Initiative (ND-GAIN). ND-GAIN bases its rankings on the vulnerability of six-life supporting sectors in every country – food, water, health, ecosystem services, human habitat and infrastructure.

The country’s comparatively modest carbon emissions were 43.6 million tonnes in 2020 and its per-capita emissions 2.74 tonnes. This indicates that the average US citizen produced more emissions than six individuals in Somalia. Yet low-emissions-high-vulnerability countries like Somalia are feeling the heat as climate change fuels increasingly frequent and severe droughts, floods and tropical storms.

All Zamzam Foundation’s programmes take account of climate change and the need to help communities adapt to it, and these are programmes that you can support by donating to Zamzam UK:

• Our emergency response programme saves lives when families have lost everything due to droughts or floods
• Our livelihoods programme enables those affected to rebuild their lives and become more resilient in the face of future disasters
• Our peacebuilding programme focuses on resolving conflicts over increasingly scarce resources such as water and pasture
• Our clean water programme delivers extensive water resources by providing new boreholes and wells
• Our health programme teams treat malnutrition (which increases in periods of drought) and deadly water-borne diseases such as cholera and acute watery diarrhoea (which tend to increase during floods).
• Our training programme includes help for farmers to adopt climate-resilient methods such as drought-resistant crops, solar-powered drip irrigation, and using water-saving hydroponics in the cultivation of fodder crops for animals.