Restoring Rural Landscapes & Livelihoods

Climate Change, Overgrazing & Unsustainable Farming

Summary

In the early 1970s, as a school boy, I spent my summer vacations in Doondheere, a rural community located about 40 kilometers from Mogadishu. Life was peaceful and vibrant. The landscape was lush and green, water was plentiful, and the fertile land supported productive farms and grazing areas. Families engaged in farming, livestock rearing, and the trade of agricultural produce and dairy products.

I returned to Doondheere in 2018, I was deeply saddened by how the landscape and the quality of life had changed. The once lush, green environment had disappeared. The fertile land had become degraded, soils had eroded, dust storms swept across the fields, and many of the ponds and seasonal water bodies that once sustained farming and livestock had vanished. What was once a productive and thriving rural community had become increasingly vulnerable.

In this blog, will explore what has happened by focusing on three main factors: climate change, overgrazing and population growth.

Climate Change

Over the past 30 years, Somalia rural communities has experienced an unprecedented increase in the frequency and severity of climate-related disasters. The country has endured prolonged droughts in 2003, 2011, 2017, 2018, and 2023 resulting rising temperature, changing rainfall patterns and increasing climate variability. The World Bank's synthesis report of 2018 estimated that droughts damages in rural communities exceed $3.25 billion. These changes had devastated impacts on the landscape and the livelihoods of rural communities including recurring crop failures, livestock losses, severe water shortages, land and soil degradation. As climate change continue to intensify, rural families started abandoning their land and moved to Mogadishu in search for survival.

As families abandon their land, the landscape becomes increasingly vulnerable to degradation. Farms and grazing areas are left unmanaged, and soil conservation practices are abandoned. Over time, vegetation declines, soil erosion accelerates, increased dust storms, water sources deteriorate, and productive land gradually turns barren.

Overgrazing Problem

Climate change has been compounded by human-induced environmental pressures, including overgrazing, unsustainable land use, deforestation, and poor natural resource management practices. Traditionally, Somalia practiced a free-roaming pastoral grazing system, where livestock grazed across large areas in search of pasture and water resources.

Increasing livestock pressure, coupled with frequent droughts, has resulted in the loss of vegetation cover, land degradation, and declining soil productivity. These pressures have weakened the resilience of pastoral ecosystems and increased the vulnerability of rural communities.

Overpopulation

Somalia’s population has grown from approximately 5 million people in the 1970s to over 19 million in 2025. However, the country’s economic system has not diversified sufficiently to create enough opportunities to absorb this growing population. At the same time, rural production systems have changed little, with farming and livestock practices remaining traditional system and unable to keep pace with increasing demand, climate pressures, and changing conditions. This has intensified competition over scarce natural resources, particularly land and water, contributing to increased tensions and frequent armed-conflicts among communities.

Solutions

Many African countries have implemented nature-based solutions to address climate change impacts, restoring degraded landscapes, and strengthen the resilience of rural communities. These approaches include reforestation, land restoration, sustainable rangeland management, watershed rehabilitation, and climate-smart agriculture. Nature-based solutions help restore soil health, improve water availability, reduce erosion, and create more sustainable livelihoods for vulnerable communities.

Somalia has recently received significant climate change mitigation and adaptation funding from the international community. However, much of this funding has been directed toward government institutions at the federal and state levels, with limited resources reaching rural communities where the impacts of climate change are most severe. As a result, practical actions such as land restoration, water management, climate-smart agriculture, and community-based adaptation have remained limited. Ensuring that climate finance reaches vulnerable rural communities and supports locally driven solutions is essential to building resilience and achieving meaningful environmental recovery.

Using climate mitigation and adaptation funding, many Sub-Saharan African countries have implemented world-class initiatives to address climate change, restore degraded landscapes, and strengthen the resilience of vulnerable communities. These programs include:

Ethiopia's Watershed Restoration and Green Legacy initiative - a community-based watershed restoration including tree planting, reforestation, restoration of degraded land, soil conservation and sustainable land management practice.
Rwanda – Landscape Restoration and Watershed Management - including restoration of wetlands, controlling soil erosion, promoting agroforestry and improving agriculture productivity.
Kenya – Restoration of Degraded Rangelands and the Great Green Wall Initiative - focusing on restoring drylands and pastoral ecosystems including rangeland restoration, water harvesting systems, improving pasture availability and reducing land degradation
Tanzania – Sustainable Land and Watershed Management - aiming to protect water resources, reduce erosion, and support rural communities.
These initiatives provide valuable lessons for Somalia in designing and implementing action-oriented solutions to address climate change and environmental degradation.
About the Author
Abdi Siyad Omar is an Architect and Urban and Regional Planner with over 25 years of international experience in land, natural resources, rural development and environmental planning. He has worked with the United Nations and the World Bank on major infrastructure and water projects in Somalia and Angola, Afghanistan, Pakistan and with Alberta Environment in Canada on land and water management. His work focuses on sustainable development, project management, evaluation and monitoring, Environmental and social impact assessment, climate resilience, and community-driven planning.