Alyona Synenko/ICRCSomalia may be one of the poorest countries in the world and beset by violence, but it is “fixable”, according to its top climate official.The country has been torn apart by more than 30 years of overlapping conflicts – including an Islamist insurgency, a civil war, and a series of regional and clan confrontations. Yet Abdihakim Ainte, the Somali prime minister’s climate advisor, still regards his country as “as story of potential – of promise”.What makes his optimism all the more surprising is the fact climate change is amplifying virtually all the challenges his country faces.One commentator described climate change as a “chaos multiplier”, because it exacerbates existing tensions and entrenches conflict in fragile states like this.Alyona Synenko/ICRCIn 2022 the country experienced its worst drought for 40 years – an event scientists estimate was made 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change.The extent of the challenge Somalia faces became clear as the convoy of International Red Cross (ICRC) Land Cruisers we were travelling in rumbled into the dry scrub that covers most of the country. We were accompanied by three guards clutching AK47s – Somalia is the only country in the world where Red Cross staff travel with armed security as standard.Alyona Synenko/ICRCThe camel herders and small-scale farmers we met are on the front line of climate change here. For thousands of years Somalis have been eking out a living moving their herds of camels and goats from one pasture to the next across this dry land.But climate change is disrupting the patterns of rain that made this way of life possible.Sheik Don Ismail told us he lost all his camels during the drought, when grazing grounds dried up and the fodder he grew on his small farm wasn’t enough to sustain them.“The well became dry and there was no pasture, so the animals began to die,” he said, shaking his head. “The life we lead now is really bad – really bad.”That drought left farmers and herders fighting for access to water and pasture. Sheik Don said he was sometimes forced to defend his land at gunpoint.“There is no respect if you don’t have a gun,” he said. “The herders who lead their animals into the farm stay back when they see my weapon. They get scared.” In a country divided into rival clan groups and already scarred by violence, these localised disputes can easily spiral into full-blown battles, said Cyril Jaurena, who runs the ICRC operation in Somalia.“Access to boreholes and pastureland gets more and more difficult to find, and so the population in the area might end up fighting – competing for those resources, and sometimes it goes to people shooting at each other,” he warned.And drought isn’t the only problem here. Last year Somalia experienced terrible floods as a result of rains scientists say were made twice as intense by human-caused global warming. The floodwater washed away precious soils killing hundreds of people and displacing one million others. Alyona Synenko/ICRCThe effects of Somalia’s climate change “double whammy” are all too evident in the hunger clinic the Red Cross runs in a hospital in the port city of Kismayo on the south coast.Every day a steady stream of mothers bring their malnourished babies here. Many have had to cross from territory controlled by al-Qaeda’s lethal affiliate, Islamist militants al-Shabab, to get here. The UN estimates more than 1.5m children under the age of five are acutely malnourished in Somalia.Alyona Synenko/ICRCAround four million Somalis have been driven into vast makeshift refugee camps – about a fifth of the total population.Displaced people make their homes out of anything they can get hold of – pieces of old fabric, plastic sheets and rusty corrugated iron – all draped over a web of dry sticks. Some people even unroll tin cans into strips to form parts of their walls.There is little international support, if any. At the refugee camp I visited, just outside the city of Garowe in the north of Somalia, families have to pay for their food and water, as well as pay rent for the scraps of land where they build their shacks.After more than three decades of war, Somalia has fallen way down the list of international priorities. Its problems have been eclipsed by what seem like more urgent conflicts, in places like Ukraine and Gaza. The UN calculates Somalia needs at least $1.6bn (about £1.2bn) to meet the basic humanitarian needs of the people this year, but so far just $600 million has been pledged by donor governments.Alyona Synenko/ICRCThe entwined impacts of climate and conflict have created a hug …
