Climate change induced political conflict and violence in greater Somalia

This study offers a critical climate history of the Somali civil war and how this political conflict proliferated to Somali inhabited regions of Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti and how it was exacerbated by earth aridity that occasioned famines and droughts. This study posits – as its thesis and argument – that climate change induced droughts and famines cause and exacerbate the perennial and recurring political conflicts and violence in Greater Somalia. Decreasing rainfalls and increasing aridity led to the shrinking of grazing pasturelands and tree cover in the Somali peninsula leading to massive dry earth lands. The consequences of these long abrupt dry spells of famines and droughts is both state institutions and communal vulnerabilities which translate to often violent contestations over the meagre pasturelands and water wells. Political conflict in the Somali world is invariably theorized and conceptualized to be predicated on clan and communal relations and the absence of effective state capacity in the face of clan militias and terror groups. This study argues that at the foundation of political conflict in the Somali peninsula is a climate change that disrupted centuries long pastoralist livelihoods and rendered the earth dry and destitute. This study employs a multi-disciplinary geospatial analysis framework to examine the ecological, climatic, and socio-political dynamics across Greater Somalia and depicts how tree cover change and climate variability overlap with (and translates to) conflict and violence patterns. The significance of this study is that if offers an analytical case of how aridity and dry earth occasioned by climate change lead to political conflicts and violence.