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MOGADISHU — The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations said on Friday that it requires 11.8 million U.S. dollars to ramp up mitigation measures, including mapping out flood-prone areas, ahead of a rare “super El Nino” in Somalia.
Etienne Peterschmitt, FAO’s representative to Somalia, said funds will be used to protect people living along the Juba and Shabelle rivers where risks are highest, and will complement large-scale cash and livelihood support already identified under the Humanitarian Response Plan for Somalia.
“There are no excuses for inaction when climate models from global and regional forecasting centers show a strong confidence, more than 90 percent of increased rainfall over southern parts of the country due to a concurrence of El Nino conditions and a positive Indian Ocean Dipole phenomenon,” he said in a statement. “This will result in a rare ‘Super El Nino’ weather event from October to December this year.”
The FAO estimated that 1.2 million people and 1.5 million hectares of productive land are at high risk of flooding in Somalia.
The UN food agency said it has developed a comprehensive, preparedness, anticipatory action and response plan aimed at mitigating and responding to the impact of the crisis. The plan is part of its global anticipatory action and response plan, which targets 25 countries at high risk of El Nino impacts on agricultural livelihoods and food security.
Peterschmitt said the FAO is rapidly scaling up its early warning and anticipatory action activities, aiming to protect one million people.
He said the FAO is working with the Somali Disaster Management Agency and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to support the coordination of anticipatory action, and called on other actors to take El Nino warnings seriously, working together to prevent loss of life and livelihoods in Somalia.
El Nino is one of several key climate drivers impacting East African weather, and unlike the La Nina event, which brought severe and prolonged drought from 2020-2022, El-Nino often results in above-normal rainfall in the East Africa region, the FAO said.
“In the last 30 years, the frequency of flood events in the riverine areas of the Juba and Shabelle river basins has tripled, often resulting in human casualties and major economic damage. As recently as May this year, a catastrophic flood along the Shabelle River displaced 250,000 people,” Peterschmitt added.
Source: Xinhua Origin: View original
