Somalia is one of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, in part because of the enduring effects of over three decades of violent conflict. From mid 2021 to early 2023 Somalia experienced its most severe drought on record. At the height of the drought, in August 2022, clan militias and the Somali Armed Forces launched operations against the armed group Al-Shabab in areas of south-central Somalia that have little to no government presence and very limited capacity to cope with the effects of drought. In 2022, some 1.3 million people were internally displaced by drought and more than 600 000 (the highest number in over a decade) by violent conflict.
There is an urgent need to address the effects of climate change and the drivers of conflict in Somalia, but there are few examples of initiatives that seek to address both issues in tandem. This paper presents findings from two European Union-funded projects led by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Somalia, in partner ship with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and SIPRI. The Deegan Bile (‘enhancing the environment’ in Somali) projects sought to use climate action as a platform for reducing violent conflict over natural resources in the Federal Member States of Galmudug and Hirshabelle. This paper examines the Deegan Bile projects as examples of environmental peace building, which encompasses approaches that address the environmental impacts of conflict and identify environment-related opportunities for peacebuilding. It finds that approach used by the IOM can support credible, inclusive local institutions for natural resource management, foster cross-clan collaboration on climate-smart infrastructure and nature-based solutions, and forge or strengthen relationships between formal authorities and rural communities through their joint design, planning and implementation of activities aimed at both climate action and conflict reduction. All these factors are essential to the success of climate action and peacebuilding initiatives.
This research has also identified lessons for comparable environmental peacebuilding approaches. Policymakers and practitioners should carefully consider the need to delicately balance the interests of humans and nature in project design, the imperative to ensure the political sustainability of project outcomes, and the necessity to comprehensively evaluate both the social and the environmental impacts of a project—which is difficult given the short time frames of project implementation periods and the narrow indicators available. As the global community grapples with the intertwined challenges of climate change and conflict, there is a real need for iterative responses that facilitate action and learning in tandem. The Deegan Bile projects therefore offer crucial insights into both the opportunities and the hurdles for designing and implementing environmental peace building approaches that address the impacts of climate change while also contributing to sustainable peace in fragile contexts.
This paper therefore concludes with lessons for climate action and peacebuilding that could be applied more broadly in Somalia as well as in other fragile and conflict-affected areas. It highlights lessons for gender-sensitive environmental peacebuilding, for evaluating the long-term impacts of environmental peacebuilding, for community-based approaches that are context-specific and flexible, and for connecting rural development to political peace processes.
This is the summary of a paper published in May 2024 by SIPRI, authored by Kheira Tarif. The full paper can be accessed through the link here.