As drought devastates livestock and livelihoods, pastoralists in Somaliland are turning to fenced rangelands. Can enclosure balance climate resilience, tradition, and rising land conflicts?
By Anthony Langat
Balaanbal is a pastoralist settlement nestled in an expansive and mostly dusty plain surrounded by hillocks. In late July 2023, the short rains had already passed and the plains were dry again, laying bare of pasture for miles.
Cattle, sheep and goats continued to graze in the plains a few kilometers from the village, but local residents were already on the search for pasture.
Balaanbal is in located in the Togdheer region, one of the main livestock-producing regions of Somaliland – a partially recognized state in the Horn of Africa that declared independence from Somalia in 1991.
Much of Somaliland’s livestock is produced by pastoralists who have steadfastly held on to their nomadic lifestyle. But as the climate crisis has caused prolonged drought, which has hindered livestock production, communities and the government are now enclosing pastures as an alternative.
This practice, however, departs from tradition and lacks solid policy backing, which has led to instances of land conflict.
Somaliland faces its worst drought in 40 years
Livestock production contributes 60 percent of Somaliland’s GDP and about 85 percent of its foreign export earnings, while employing 70 percent of its population. Live animals are exported through the port of Berbera, mainly to the Arabian Peninsula.
While the livestock trade has suffered other recent disruptions, including insecurity, the COVID-19 pandemic and embargoes due to animal diseases, prolonged drought due to the climate crisis has been the biggest challenge to livestock production in Somaliland.
As livestock production is the main source of income for many in the region, this has had severe implications for food security. In 2025, 2.5 million people were affected by drought across 26 districts in Somaliland, prompting the Somaliland government to declare a state of emergency.
In 2023, amid a drought said to be Somaliland’s worst in 40 years, the UN reported that at least 3.5 million livestock had died across Somaliland and Somalia due to lack of pasture and water.
Meanwhile, nearly a third of Somaliland’s population – 1.66 million people – were facing food insecurity and malnutrition, with women and children the worst affected, according to ActionAid.
Towards rangeland enclosure
In response to this situation, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched an initiative to set up pasture reserves in Somaliland. This was done under the Food and Nutrition Security Resilience Programme (FNS-REPRO), a Netherlands-funded project to build food system resilience in Somaliland, Sudan and South Sudan between 2019 and 2024.
As part of the project, residents of Balaanbal were asked to list their natural resources and then identify an area where they would be assisted in putting up fencing, essentially establishing a rangeland enclosure.
Mohamed Jana, a resident of Balaanbal, was a member of the Balanbaal Natural Resource Management Committtee, which was set up for the project. He says they developed a natural resource management plan, stopped all ongoing charcoal production on community land and then set up a community patrol. “We then raised extensive community awareness about the reserve,” he recalls.
The project was handed over to the Somaliland government upon its completion, says Abdi Kunow, a livestock sector coordinator with FAO in Somaliland. During the drought of 2025, the government opened up the enclosed areas for livestock to graze in.
“Government officials told us that 20,000 livestock grazed in the enclosure when there was no pasture in the rangelands,” says Kunow.
Balaanbal wasn’t the first place in Somaliland to have its rangelands enclosed. While there have been many rangeland enclosures in Somaliland, there are no comprehensive figures on how much rangeland has been enclosed nationally, says Deeq Osman, a researcher with the Institute for Strategic Insights and Research in the capital, Hargeisa.
“However, the government has formally supported the establishment of five community-managed grazing sites like Bancawl, Casuura, Bookh, Aroori and Tuuyo, alongside two government-managed grazing reserves,” says Osman. He adds that around 20 potential communal rangeland sites have been identified and assessed for future management interventions.
Osman identifies several factors behind rangeland enclosure in Somaliland, including declining pasture quality due to overgrazing and climate stress, weak clarity in communal land ownership and overlapping land claims, and the need to secure pastoral livelihoods in the face of growing resource scarcity.
He also observes a policy shift toward combining traditional pastoral knowledge with modern rangeland management practices to improve sustainability.
Traditionally, he says, Somali pastoral systems were based on communal and seasonal access to rangelands, governed through customary law (xeer).
“While temporary or small-scale enclosures, such as for fodder preservation or drought coping, existed, large-scale permanent enclosures are largely a recent development and differ from the historically open and mobility-based grazing system,” he explains.
Is enclosure driving land conflicts?
In a paper on the socioeconomic impacts of private enclosures in Somaliland, Abdikarim Aden Omar writes that a variety of rangeland management systems were implemented from the colonial period until the outbreak of the Somali Civil War and Somaliland’s declaration of independence in 1991.
“Different grazing reserves were established and put [into] operation to cover the needs of the pastoral society and their livestock, and avoid the [dilapidation] of the rangeland resource,” he writes.
Unlike in Balaanbal, where FAO involved the local community in establishing enclosures, there are instances where rangelands have been enclosed by community members or by the government without inclusive consultation.
In some instances, this had led to conflict as enclosures have clashed with open, mobility-based customary grazing practices. Osman says there have been disputes over land ownership and control, particularly around enclosure boundaries, as well as restricted access to grazing and water for mobile pastoralist groups.
“These dynamics can disrupt traditional migration patterns and strain relations between communities and authorities,” he says.
Osman suggests an integrated community-based rangeland management (CBRM) approach as a solution to resolve these land conflicts while improving livelihoods and protecting biodiversity.
He envisions this approach as involving communities in decision making, strengthening customary institutions and promoting co-management between government and pastoral communities. This, he says, could also ensure equitable access to land while blending both traditional and scientific practices.
“Such an approach builds on Somaliland’s long-standing Indigenous governance systems while addressing contemporary environmental and institutional pressures,” he says.
