Scaling up climate-resilient livelihoods in Somalia

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)’s "Scaling Up Gender-Inclusive and Climate-Resilient Livelihoods program in Somalia" responds to Somalia's significant climate vulnerability and expressed need for greater climate-adaptation support. As one of the root causes of the country's cyclical and prolonged humanitarian crises climate change in Somalia requires an increased focus on inclusive and conflict-sensitive natural resource management climate-related disaster risk planning climate-resilient livelihoods and inclusive and gender-sensitive governance. This project aims to fund activities that fulfill these objectives through 2 joint United Nations programmes. This includes one that seeks to layer humanitarian and development interventions to increase the climate resilience of Somali agro-pastoralists and pastoralists. Another one seeks to ensure gender-sensitive outcomes from the rehabilitation of significant irrigation and flood management infrastructure along of Somalia’s largest rivers. Project activities include: (1) building government capacity; (2) developing analysis and structures to enable community-led climate-related disaster risk planning and natural resource management; (3) providing training and resources to diversify and strengthen climate-resilient livelihoods; (4) enabling access to additional financial resources for marginalized groups; and (5) developing and implementing actionable gender analyses within a large-scale climate adaptation programme.

The expected outcomes of this project include: (1) improved ecosystem health through sustainable natural resource management and conflict-sensitive practices; (2) enhanced climate resilience of livestock and agricultural production systems; and (3) strengthened gender-inclusive governance and institutional capacity building.