World Day to Combat Desertification & Drought: Somalia in Crisis
By Erika Pietrzak, June 17 , 2025
Today, six million Somalians are in need of urgent humanitarian aid, with half of the population experiencing water insecurity. 80 percent of Somalia is experiencing severe drought conditions, with 2.6 million Somalians facing water shortages.
Source: Concern Worldwide US
Despite the country contributing minimally to climate change, Somalia is severely impacted by it every day, having endured conflict and harsh climate conditions for the last few decades. Today, six million Somalians are in need of urgent humanitarian aid, with half of the population experiencing water insecurity. This lack of water leads to food desertification as crops and livestock cannot grow. This has exacerbated violent conflict in the area and requires urgent intervention. As a result of these compounding factors, one in eight children dies before the age of five, and close to four million people are internally displaced within the country.
Situated at the top of the Horn of Africa, Northern Somalia struggles to get moisture in the air. The monsoon winds have lost their moisture by the time they reach Northern Somalia, leaving the area particularly arid. Since 2011, Somalia has only had one successful rainy season. Slow responses to the 2010 drought led to an estimated 260,000 lives lost between 2010 and 2012 in Somalia, half of whom were children under the age of five. This desertification has in turn fueled violence and extreme insecurity, which came to a head in 2015 when political infighting increased and new offenses were launched against terrorist groups. This continuous cycle of drought, occurring throughout the past decade, has made humanitarian intervention and data collection extremely difficult and has complicated solutions to environmental and political unrest. Even the camps that displaced Somalians seek refuge lack water and food.
In 2017, the country was hit by a drought that left 6.7 million Somalians in need of assistance, including one million displaced persons. During this time, Somalia saw outbreaks of cholera and diarrhea, alongside the worst measles outbreak in years, infecting over 15,000 people. Due to dehydration and famine caused by drought, many were unable to reach medical attention. By the end of 2018, 2.2 million Somalians were still experiencing high levels of food insecurity.
Source: Concern Worldwide US
The 2020-2023 drought in Somalia came from five failed rainy seasons and “caused 90 percent of the country to be under extreme conditions and impacted over eight million people.” This was the worst drought the region had seen in decades. Between 2020 and 2021, over 3.2 million Somalians were affected by the drought, and 169,000 left their homes in search of water. Despite this urgency, by the summer of 2022, Somalia’s response fund was just 27% funded. During this time, 43,000 deaths can be linked to the drought.
A drying phenomenon called La Niña is expected to continue in Somalia for the next few months, which will increase food insecurity, waterborne illnesses, and resource-based conflict. Increasingly, people are forced to sell their livestock and possessions, as well as send their children off for increasingly dangerous tasks. As a result of chronic underfunding within Somalia’s aid systems, approximately 8.3 million Somalians are expected to face medium to high food insecurity.
Today, 80 percent of Somalia is experiencing severe drought conditions, with 2.6 million Somalians facing water shortages. Consequently, nearly one hundred thousand people fled their homes in central and southern Somalia as resource-based conflict rose. In Jubaland, Somalia, the average cost of twenty liters of water has more than doubled, and the price of sorghum has tripled in the last decade. By the end of September 2025, 1.7 million Somalians had been displaced by drought since January 2021, which is only expected to increase as worsening droughts are expected due to a combination of global warming and a decrease in humanitarian assistance due to insufficient funds.
Droughts cause significant desertification in Somalia as the land dries up and loses its nutrients. About one-third of Somalia’s land was found to be degraded in a United Nations study in 2020. Between 2000 and 2015, the total degraded land was over 145,000 square kilometers, over 25 percent of the total land area in Somalia. The most productive soil left is the land at highest risk of future desertification, as overgrazing increases in the limited fertile areas left. Coastal towns in Somalia have turned into deserts and fish have fled the local waters because of the increasing temperatures. Heavy sandstorms have riddled the region over the last decade and a half and local efforts to alleviate their effects have failed. In Hobyo, a hospital was buried in sand after a storm just a year after its building. Sand dunes have blocked food shipments to the coast and schools have been engulfed in sand, causing prices to skyrocket due to the high scarcity.
Source: The Guardian
Technological developments from around the world have been able to alleviate some of these problems, but have a long way to go. Some rainwater harvesting techniques have been taught to residents across Somalia in hopes of increasing crop yield during the dry season as well as encouraging farmers to cultivate more hardy, resilient crops. However, this has coincided with abandoning traditional practices and crops that have been important in the region for centuries, including the cultivation of acacia trees. Bore holes and ground reserves have increased across the region, but remain scarce due to the vast and spread-out rural populations.
The World Bank and United Nations lead the charge against drought and desertification in Somalia, but the fight has a long way to go and needs more international attention to be successful. The World Bank’s Somalia Emergency Drought Response and Recovery Project (SEDRP) provides “cash and livelihood support to local communities while improving their disaster preparedness.” This program has assisted 2.1 million individuals to build resilience against droughts, including fixing 87 water public structures. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) also leads climate-smart agricultural efforts in the country, demonstrating that with the right support these programs can help communities thrive for the first time in decades.
Somalia contributes just 0.03 percent of the world’s global emissions, but bears significant brunt of the impact of climate change. Centuries old traditions are being forced to change, hundreds of thousands are forced out of their homes, livelihoods are lost, sickness has run rampant, and conflict has become commonplace because of the seemingly endless cycle of droughts in the region. The international world must take immediate action to curb our global emissions to prevent worsening droughts and address current impacts of decades of droughts.
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