A flagship project has been launched by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations with the aim to boost resilience and climate adaptation among the rural communities in Somalia.
This project is called “Reducing Communities’ Vulnerability to Drought and external shocks (Recover)” and it intersects with the existing humanitarian programming by offering vulnerable families a pathway from humanitarian dependency toward resilience.
FAO’s current representative in Somalia, Etienne Peterschmitt has said that Somalia is currently experiencing a cycle of climate shocks that could trigger an increasingly dire and prolonged humanitarian crisis. In his statement issued in Mogadishu, Peterschmitt said “We need to reorient our efforts toward making communities self-sufficient and able to withstand these shocks if we truly want to see Somalia exit this cycle of disasters.”
FAO has said that the project partners will work along with the farmers and help improve access to equipment, build skills and capacity in climate-smart production, support income diversification, and the overall market access for over 50,000 rural population. Somalia has experienced over two years of drought and hence requires investments in longer-term actions across the productive sectors that seek to address the underlying causes of this recurrent crisis.
The FAO plans to implement this project in collaboration with the government of Somalia and the federal member states in Hirshabelle, South West, and Jubaland, as these hold great potential for productivity and food security in the Horn of Africa nation.
