Attachments
1 INTRODUCTION
For simplicity, we use ‘extreme event’ throughout the rest of this report as a catch-all to refer to both extreme weather event (e.g. floods or storms) and extreme climate events (e.g. droughts persisting over one or more seasons). Somalia is already experiencing significant losses and damages from human-induced climate change. The direct economic impacts from extreme climate events1 such as droughts and floods affect vital sectors like agriculture and livestock. Agriculture, including the livestock sector, is Somalia’s largest employer and second-largest commodity export. Nearly one fourth of the population are agropastoralists, with smallholder farming making up approximately 80% of total crop production and 70% of marketed produce. More than 60% of the Somali population depends on livestock, which contributes 40% to the country’s GDP (Government of Somalia, 2018a).
Losses and damages can result from extreme weather and climate events that occur over a relatively short time — such as floods, heat waves and droughts. They can also stem from slow-onset processes like increasing temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns in seasons, sea-level rise or ocean acidification. These slow-onset processes, in turn, can contribute to desertification, biodiversity loss, land and forest degradation, and salinisation of coastal water and soils. Losses and damages from extreme and slow-onset events manifest in various forms, including direct and indirect losses and damages, and economic and noneconomic losses and damages (Figure 1).
Estimating climate-attributable losses and damages is essential for ensuring they are appropriately addressed through national and international policy, finance and action. However, past efforts to quantify them have often overlooked the extent to which climate change plays an attributable role in exacerbating the intensity and/or frequency of extreme events. This distinction, though complex, is crucial for shaping appropriate institutional responses and financing mechanisms under the UNFCCC. Despite improvements in data availability and attribution science, there remains a scarcity of assessments that quantify climate changeattributable loss and damage, particularly in data-poor contexts like Somalia. This gap in knowledge hinders effective policy formulation and access to international support.
To help address this gap, this report has two main objectives:
- To provide national-level policy-makers in Somalia with new estimates of current and potential future direct economic climate-attributable loss and damage, to support national planning and international advocacy for loss and damage finance. The report recognises that direct economic losses and damages are only part of the total costs of climate change. Therefore, it also discusses evidence on the indirect economic and non-economic impacts of extreme and slow-onset events.
- To suggest recommendations for Somali policy-makers and the international finance community for addressing loss and damage and dealing with identified loss and damage data gaps.
The report is organised as follows: the second section discusses climate change in Somalia; the third presents evidence on the different dimensions of loss and damage in the country; the fourth section discusses how loss and damage is currently being addressed and financed; and the final section provides recommendations. A synopsis of the methodology for calculating losses and damages is presented in the Box 1; for a more complete description, see Panwar et al. (2023).