The article “Climate Cash For A Divided Somalia” discusses the recent approval of nearly $80 million in climate financing for Somalia’s “Climate Resilient Agriculture in Somalia (Ugbaad)” project by the Green Climate Fund (GCF). This funding aims to improve food security and agricultural resilience for Somalia’s rural communities, potentially impacting 2.1 million people. An additional $15 million has been provided by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, bringing the total funding close to $100 million.
Despite the urgency for climate investment in Somalia, the approval raises concerns due to the country’s political instability, corruption issues, and clan divisions. The federal government is seen as favoring certain clans, complicating the equitable distribution of funds. The Hawaadle clan’s call for greater autonomy, ongoing conflicts, and the government’s withholding of funds from certain regions further complicate the landscape for effective aid.
The article highlights the dire situation faced by Somalia’s pastoralists and farmers, who are vulnerable to climate change and have suffered from severe droughts and food insecurity. Climate-related issues could exacerbate existing inter-clan conflicts, particularly in resource-scarce areas. Additionally, past instances of clan violence related to both scarcity and abundance of resources illustrate the complexities involved.
Lastly, the article cautions that while funding announcements can signal progress, there is a risk that they might overlook the intricate political realities on the ground, potentially hindering meaningful development. Effective implementation of climate-resilient initiatives is crucial and must address the deep-rooted challenges of corruption, clan dynamics, and political fragmentation in Somalia.
The complete piece is as follows:
Climate Cash For A Divided Somalia
By The Somali Wire Team
Earlier this week in Incheon, South Korea, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) Board approved nearly USD 80 million in climate financing for the ‘Climate Resilient Agriculture in Somalia (Ugbaad)’ project. The endorsement came in just under 5 months, one of the fastest ever such-approved projects for the GCF on such large a scale, and followed the intensive lobbying of Somalia’s Environment Minister Khadija Mohamed Al-Makhzoumi. A further USD 15 million has been pledged by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) through the USAID-funded TRANSFORM project, bringing the total close to an extraordinary USD 100 million.
The project is intended to develop food security, resilient agriculture techniques, and water management for Somalia’s rural communities and it is estimated it will impact 2.1 million people. Few details beyond that are readily available, but the celebration has been undiluted. One senior GCF official remarked that the approval showed that “when there’s a will, the international community can act swiftly to support those most in need.”
And there is certainly a pressing need for greater climate investment in Somalia, but the speed at which the project was approved, considering the scale of corruption in the country, the historic issues of development money aiding particular clans, and the current fraught political context, should raise questions.
Absolutely, Somalia should receive climate funding—but what ‘Somalia’ are we talking about? The political settlement that sustained the country’s patchwork of clan elites is splintering, driven by a centralizing federal government widely perceived as dominated by the Hawiye. In the latest evidence of such fracturing, the Hawaadle that occupy Hiiraan in Hirshabelle and control the city of Beledweyne have revived their campaign for a ‘Hiiraan State.’
Much of southern Somalia remains anathemic to Villa Somalia’s demands that Ethiopian troops withdraw by the end of 2024, while Puntland remains adrift from the federation with no sign of return. Consequently, funneling money through the federal Environment Ministry, a body that is regarded as particularly corrupt, is far from a ‘neutral’ stance to bring about development for rural farming communities. The GCF has also allotted USD 7 million to develop the capacity of the Environment Ministry in the coming year.
Considering the federal government’s withholding of development funds from Puntland amid their political rift, the GCF, FAO, and USAID will need to be immensely careful that their funding does not inadvertently further the deepening center-periphery schisms. It should also not go unnoticed that climate change is one of the areas that the federal government is seeking to assume control over in the coming months as part of the reforms to the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM).
None of this is to deny that Somalia’s pastoralists, herders, and farmers are in dire need of support. Millions of livestock have perished in successive devastating droughts, upending entire communities and historic ways of eking out sustenance. Somalia remains one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world despite the vast majority of the predominantly impoverished population contributing essentially nothing to the crisis. Worryingly, the recent rainy ‘Gu’ season once again fell short of expectations, imperiling millions of Somalis in the coming months with food insecurity.
Moreover, the increasingly unstable climate, driving increasing competition for scarcer resources, is further helping to reactivate and intensify historic inter-clan conflicts that pockmark Somalia. One of the most punishing environmental areas of south-central Somalia can be found in the restive region of Mudug. It is no coincidence that the territory has seen some of the most intense clashes between the Sa’ad and Lelkase.
In June, well over a dozen people were killed after the digging of a well in Jii’boor village in the Galdogob district in western Mudug triggered fighting between the two sides. The September meeting in Galkayo between Galmudug regional President Ahmed Abdi ‘QoorQoor’ and his Puntland counterpart Said Abdullahi Deni to discuss, among other things, establishing mechanisms for soothing these disputes was a welcome move. In theory, these are all issues that could be ameliorated by the kinds of large-scale climate interventions the GCF plans, but they must be careful.
It is not just periods of scarcity that have historically triggered clan violence and exploitation, but abundance as well. As is the case across the world, it is the disadvantaged in Somalia that have disproportionately suffered from the climate crisis and successive natural disasters.
Minority clans and groups like the Somali Bantu are the ones that were dispossessed from their homes and lands during the 1990s and 2000s by marauding militias, driven into the overcrowded displacement camps on the edge of cities before being dislocated once again by more powerful clan families.
Consequently, many of these Bantu and others have been taken advantage of through the ‘IDP trapping’ carried out by the gatekeepers to displacement camps, appropriating a portion of money or aid intended for some of the most vulnerable in Somalia. This structural discrimination that has historically broken down along clan lines has been repeatedly reflected in the international resources distributed for climate change, humanitarian aid, and development projects.
The powerful patronage networks through which the lifeblood of Somalia’s political economy flows maintain this dynamic despite efforts to the contrary, and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms remain immensely complex despite years of practice. With the security situation so dire in much of central and southern Somalia, particularly due to Al-Shabaab’s entrenched presence, the capacity of international staff to actually establish the precise nature and impact of their projects is challenging.
It is perhaps little surprise that the GCF has been so exultant about its plans; it is hardly going to raise immediate concerns when it has announced that USD 100 million will be invested. However, many of the most prominent multi-laterals, like the IMF, have been repeatedly revealed to be ignorant of the political realities in which they insert themselves.
For instance, completing the Heavily Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC) in late 2023 has unlocked funding and borrowing for Somalia’s federal government—even while the central agreements of fiscal federalism remain unfinished and unimplementable.
All this lends to the veneer and the view that Somalia’s ‘state-building’ trajectory has been a linear process, only briefly interrupted by the spasms toward the end of the Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo regime. And announcements like those by the GCF allow federal officials to proclaim progress while unraveling the painstaking yards of political consensus that hold the country together.
Climate-resilient agriculture in Somalia should be an undeniable developmental priority in the ever-warming world, but implementation is another matter altogether. The devil will be, as always, in the details.
This article originally appeared in Sahan Research’s thrice-weekly bulletin “The Somali Wire,” Issue No. 747, on October 25, 2024.
