{"id":41994,"date":"2019-12-19T07:22:10","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T07:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41994"},"modified":"2019-12-19T07:22:10","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T07:22:10","slug":"floods-compound-somalias-year-of-climate-misery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41994","title":{"rendered":"Floods compound Somalia\u2019s year of climate misery"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"195\">\n<p>\nBELEDWEYNE, Somalia: As Somalia withered from drought early this year, and her goats dropped dead from thirst, Maka Abdi Ali begged for rain. When the skies finally opened, nature was unmerciful.<\/p>\n<p>\nUnrelenting downpours in October turned to flash floods, destroying her meager home and few remaining possessions, and washing away whatever harvest and bony animals farmers managed to save during the months without rain.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cI have nothing now,\u201d 67-year-old Ali told AFP in a squalid camp on the outskirts of Beledweyne in central Somalia. Here, 180,000 people fled the fast-rising waters in the country\u2019s worst floods in memory.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe arid Horn of Africa country has always been hostage to climate extremes. Rain is erratic, and drought a feature of life.<\/p>\n<p>\nBut catastrophic weather events are occurring in Somalia with ever-greater fury and frequency, trapping millions in a near-constant cycle of crisis. Little by little, the ability to recover is ground down, say experts.<\/p>\n<p>\nThere is no time to rebuild homes and replenish food stocks before another disaster strikes.<\/p>\n<p>\nImpoverished and weakened by decades of war, battling an armed insurgency, Somalia is ill-equipped to cope with the destabilising impact of double-tap environmental crises. Aid budgets are stretched trying to respond to back-to-back emergencies.<\/p>\n<p>\nIn May, the UN launched a drought appeal, warning of looming starvation as Somalia faced its worst harvest on record. Six months later, it\u2019s again appealing for help \u2014 this time for $72.5 million for half-a-million victims of flood.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cThere hasn\u2019t been a day this year where we haven\u2019t been talking about either drought or floods,\u201d Abigail Hartley, deputy head of office for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA in Somalia, told AFP.<\/p>\n<p>\nAmong those fleeing the inundation in Beledweyne, the epicenter of this disaster, were Somalis already on the run from other climate-stricken parts of the region.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cThe drought forced us to flee&#8230; now we are displaced by floods,\u201d bemoaned Maryama Osman Abdi, who abandoned her bone-dry farmland for a new start in Beledweyne.<\/p>\n<p>\nNow, her home in ruins, she contemplates her next move.<\/p>\n<p>\nMany had migrated to the banks of the Shabelle River \u2014 a lifeline which runs through Beledweyne \u2014 seeking water to revive their livestock, and nurture their crops.<\/p>\n<p>\nBut the river burst its banks under the ceaseless barrage of rain.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe mighty flood that followed should in statistical terms occur only once in 50 years, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).<\/p>\n<p>\nBut, the UN agency noted, the river overflowed in 2019, after 2018 and 2015.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cThis was different from the others. I have never seen anything like it,\u201d Omar Dule, a 74-year-old who has spent his lifetime in Beledweyne, told AFP.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe FAO, bracing for the next overflow, is repairing embankments along the river long neglected by cash-strapped authorities.<\/p>\n<p>\nRainfall extremes in Somalia are forecast to intensify this century, even as the region overall dries considerably, said Linda Ogallo, from the Nairobi-based Intergovernmental Authority on Development Climate Prediction and Applications Center.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cDroughts and floods are increasing, in frequency and intensity,\u201d said Ogallo, a climate scientist who specializes in Somalia\u2019s weather patterns.<\/p>\n<p>\nIt is an omen already playing out for Mohamed Osman Hashi, whose watermelon and sesame fields in Beledweyne have been devastated again and again.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cIn recent times, it seems to be on repeat, almost every year,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n<p>\nEast Africa has endured unusually extreme rainfall since October, with torrential deluges killing hundreds across eight countries, and displacing millions more.<\/p>\n<p>\nThis month, even as water slowly receded in Beledweyne, a tropical cyclone transformed deserts in Somalia\u2019s north into seas.<\/p>\n<p>\nBosaso, in the semi-autonomous Puntland region, received close to a year\u2019s worth of rain in less than two days.<\/p>\n<p>\nAdding to the suffering, the FAO said Wednesday that the country had been hit by its worst outbreak of desert locusts in 25 years.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe curse \u2014 exacerbated by the exceptional rain \u2014 could spread to Somalia\u2019s main crop-growing areas.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe just-concluded UN climate summit in Madrid failed to agree on compensation for poor countries, which have least to blame for causing global warming, for weather-related disasters.<\/p>\n<p>\nThis is grim news for Somalia, which lacks the resources to cope with, or plan for, an ever-more hostile climate.<\/p>\n<p>\nEach blow sets back the monumental task of rebuilding a country reliant on foreign aid to support some 5.4 million people in desperate need.<\/p>\n<p>\nTo compound problems, an October study by international researchers found climate change amplifies conflict, emboldening the Al-Shabab militants waging a potent insurgency in Somalia.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cDeveloped countries are more resilient. Somalia has been in crisis for years,\u201d said Chris Print, a hydrologist with the FAO and expert on Somalia\u2019s land and rivers.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cIronically, the poorest countries are the most likely to be impacted by climate crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nTwo months after the floods began, about 220,000 people are yet to receive assistance, the UN said.<\/p>\n<p>\nIn the fetid camps for disaster evacuees fringing Beledweyne, 100,0000 people are still unable to return home, squatting beneath tattered stick-and-cloth shelters.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cIf it happens again, you can bet that some people are just going to give up,\u201d Print told AFP.<\/p>\n<p>\nDriven from place to place, pursued by a ferocious climate, some have already reached the end of the road.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cWe don\u2019t know what else to do,\u201d said Abdi, squatting in the dirt, surrounded by nine grandchildren.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BELEDWEYNE, Somalia: As Somalia withered from drought early this year, and her goats dropped dead from thirst, Maka Abdi Ali begged for rain. When the skies finally opened, nature was unmerciful. Unrelenting downpours in October turned to flash floods, destroying her meager home and few remaining possessions, and washing away whatever harvest and bony animals&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}