CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 INTRODCUTION

This study relates to the previous study of the role of climate change in internal displacement in
Mogadishu Somalia, in this chapter, the researcher will discuss about the literature review of the
specific chosen objectives including the role of droughts, floods and water scarcity in internal
displacement in Mogadishu Somalia. The literature review will be considered wholly.

2.1 THE ROLE OF DROUGHT IN INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT

In a country with a largely pastoral and agro-pastoral economy, an increase in the frequency and
intensity of drought episodes has forced both nomadic and sedentary communities to move to
urban and periurban settlements that also host people suffering the consequences of conflict and
violence. In the absence of opportunities for durable solutions, displacement is becoming
protracted. As the population continues to grow, forced evictions have become a major trigger of
secondary displacement in urban areas. Since the end of the 2011 famine, which caused the death
of around 260,000 people –half of them children under five– recurrent drought, food insecurity,
subsequent famine risk, floods and conflict have continued to trigger displacement in Somalia.2
The 2016-2017 drought displaced more than a million people, and flooding later forced more
people from their homes. Those affected often travel long distances, many of them making their
way to urban areas. Somalia is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate
change. Temperatures are projected to increase by up to 4.3°C by the end of the century.3 The
effects of climate change are already visible in an increase in the frequency and intensity of
episodes of drought, which has contributed to desertification, crop failure, livestock death and
associated displacement. Precipitation patterns have also become more unpredictable, and
flooding, storms and cyclones more common Somalia is currently in the throes of a prolonged
drought, the onset of which came while the country was still recovering from the previous
episode. The 2016-17 drought was called Sima, which translates as “equal”, because it was so
extreme that everyone was affected. It displaced almost a million people, the majority of them to
urban centres.13 The governments of Somaliland and Puntland declared a drought in February
2016, and a year later the country’s president extended the declaration countrywide and called
the situation a national disaster. The number of food-insecure people increased to nearly 4.7
million, or 38 per cent of the population.14 By October 2017. another million people had been
displaced and as many as 6.7 million, more than half of the population, were in need of
humanitarian assistance.15 The number of new drought displacements in the first half of 2019
was less than half the figure for the same period the previous year, but many of the millionplus
people who fled the impacts of Sima have been unable to achieve durable solutions and are still
living in displacement.16 The current drought is largely the result of erratic and abnormal
precipitation during the main gu rainy season between April and June 2019, which followed an
unusually arid jilaal, or dry season, between January and March and a poor deyr, a lesser rainy
season between October and December 2018.17 More than half of the country’s displaced
households are food insecure as a result. Drought also affects food and water prices, which
doubled in some cases in Burco, Galkayo and Qardho during Sima. In Puntland, which includes
Qardho, the price of 200 litres of water rose by 150 per cent from $4 to $10.27 “If prices
skyrocket, families have no choice but to think of anywhere they can get cheaper and affordable
food,” said the leader of a women’s association in Galkayo. When nomadic IDPs were asked
about the pull factors which guided their choice of destination, many cited seeking better
economic opportunities and food security. Their sedentary counterparts tended to focus more on
improving their safety and physical security. This ties in with the reasons the two groups gave
for their displacement. Many of the former cited livestock loss and poverty as a push factor,
while the latter focused mostly on conflict The 2015-2016 El Niño, one of the strongest on
record, caused severe drought across eastern Africa, which lasted until 2017 and was followed by
extreme floods in 2018.28 Severe drought set in again at the beginning of 2019 and the rainy
season between May and June all but failed.29 This was followed by the strongest Indian Ocean
dipole in more than a decade in October, which caused more record-breaking floods.30
Alternating severe droughts and floods affect many of the same communities. The drought
conditions brought on by the 2015-2016 El Niño affected the whole country, but were most
severely felt in the regions of Bakool, Bari, Bay, Galgadudd, Gedo, Hiraan, Lower Shabelle,
Mudug, Sanaag, Sool and Togdheer, where more than a million people were displaced for
reasons attributable to drought between 2015 and 2019. More than 550,000 people were
displaced by floods in the same regions and over the same time period. (IDMC, 2020)
2.2 THE ROLE OF FLOODS IN INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT

Eighty-five per cent of all disaster displacement recorded in Africa since 2009 has been triggered
by floods, the impacts of which are aggravated by broader development issues including poverty;
a lack of urban planning, drainage systems and waste management; and riverbank erosion and
land degradation. Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, was affected by widespread flooding and
a major landslide in August 2017 that destroyed approximately 1200 homes and other urban
infrastructure, and triggered around 11,800 new displacements.35 Torrential rain and floods in
August 2019 destroyed another 450 homes, mainly in poor neighbourhoods, and triggered
another 5,300 new displacements in August 2019.36 Informal and unregulated urban sprawl and
deforestation on the slopes surrounding the city intensified the impacts of both events.37
Recently, the Disaster Management Department collaborated with different stakeholders to step-
up efforts for flood risk reduction, awareness raising and response.38 Flood displacement often
reoccurs in the same location, which points to the cyclical nature of hazards and people’s chronic
vulnerability, poverty and exposure. In Niger, floods destroyed around 9,000 homes in 2018 and
5,500 as of September 2019.39 Lack of data makes it difficult to determine if the same families
are displaced each year. But evidence shows that the city of Niamey struggles with floods each
year during the rainy season. The city is expanding fast, and people have settled in flood-prone
areas and built their homes with materials unable to withstand such events.40 The government
has banned construction in these areas, but people keep building in and returning to them.41
Floods affect both urban and rural communities, but those who have already been displaced by
conflict are often overlooked when they are displaced again by disasters. Floods destroyed
shelters hosting 6,800 IDPs in the city of Maiduguri in north-east Nigeria in August 2019 and
contributed to the spread of cholera.42 In the state of Borno more broadly, floods have affected
people already suffering the impacts of Boko Haram’s decade-long insurgency and the activities
of other non-state armed groups.43 Flood have also displaced hundreds thousands of people in
recent years in other countries such as Cameroon, Somalia and South Sudan, where the impacts
of conflict and disasters combine to deepen humanitarian crises.44 In Sudan, floods displace
thousands of people every year in the Jebel Marra area of Darfur, where ongoing clashes worsen
their plight and make access extremely difficult.45 In countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and
Somalia, sudden-onset hazards often strike areas already affected by drought.46 Heavy rain and
floods have also affected agricultural production in Malawi recently after an extended period of
drought.47 Displacement associated with coastal erosion is less reported on but has been
identified across West Africa, where slow-onset sea level rise and human factors such as poor of
coastal management combine with sudden-onset events such as storms and tidal surges To break
the cycle of floods repeatedly triggering displacement in the same countries and communities, it
is important to assess the likelihood and potential scale of future flood displacement events.
Reactive measures alone will not reduce the phenomenon. It has to be seen as a risk which can,
however, be mitigated. Longer-term development investments that include flood prevention and
risk reduction are required, and baseline data is needed to inform them. We improved our
riverine flood displacement risk model in 2018 with the aim of creating a dataset to inform
disaster risk reduction measures. The model now has more granular data on population exposure,
which gives a clearer sense of the people likely to be displaced by future riverine floods. It
estimates that an average of 2.8 million people could be displaced by riverine floods in Africa
during any given year in the future. Highly populated countries such as DRC, Ethiopia and
Nigeria unsurprisingly have greater flood displacement risk. Nigeria is not only Africa’s most
populous country. It is also at the confluence of two major West African rivers, the Niger and the
Benue, which meet in centre of the country. Heavy precipitation upstream in Cameroon, Mali
and Niger during the rainy season often triggers flooding down river, and hundreds of thousands
of Nigerians are displaced each year. Mass events were recorded in 2012 and 2018, giving
Nigeria an average of 785,000 flood displacements a year over the past decade, the highest figure
on the continent. It is also more than the next 11 most affected countries combined. Our model
predicts that an annual average of 442,000 people could be displaced by floods in the future,
giving Nigeria the highest flood displacement risk in Africa as well (see figure 5). figure 5:
Comparison between the countries with the highest historical flood displacement and those at
higher flood displacement risk 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 0 100 200 300 400 Senegal
Uganda Benin DRC Mozambique Angola Malawi Somalia South Sudan Chad Ethiopia Kenya
Sudan Niger Nigeria Looking to the past - historical events: Average of new displacement
associated with disasters (2009-2018), in thousands Looking to the future - probable events:
Annual Average Displacement, in thousands Nigeria is clearly an outlier, but when flood
displacement risk is looked at relative to population size, other countries come to light. Somalia,
where one in 100 people could be displaced at any given year in the future, has the highest
relative flood displacement risk on the continent. Other countries with high relative risk include
Chad, Congo, Liberia and Madagascar. These figures may appear high, but although they give a
sense of the scale of the challenge that lies ahead, they should be considered underestimates. Our
model only considers riverine flooding, which means that other phenomena such flash floods and
urban floods are not captured. In addition, the model uses the likelihood of housing destruction
as a proxy. Flood displacement risk is likely to be much higher in urban areas without adequate
drainage and water management systems. Nor does the model assess the role of rapid urban
growth in increasing risk because it Even with these caveats, however, the evidence it produces
can be used to inform national and local disaster risk reduction (DRR) measures. It not only
calculates national flood displacement risk, but can also generate more granular figures to
identify hotspots. This valuable information can be used as the basis for developing crisis
prevention and management tools, contingency plans and early warning systems Many floods are
triggered by tropical depressions, or storms. Most do not develop into cyclones, but climate
change is driving more frequent, intense and less predictable events that have hit many African
countries hard. Twenty storms and cyclones have triggered more than a million displacements
across the continent over the past decade. Few countries are in the tropical cyclone belt, but
storms such as Idai and Kenneth do widespread damage in addition to the displacement they
trigger (see Spotlight). Most of Kenneth’s impacts were felt in Mozambique and Malawi, where
media attention was also concentrated. The storm also triggered more than 14,500 new
displacements and destroyed more than 3,800 homes in Comoros, one of the world’s poorest
countries, but this received little coverage. The island of Grande Comore was hardest hit.55
Kenneth represented a significant setback for the small island developing state’s population,
which is highly vulnerable. Agriculture was particularly hard hit, and some departments lost
almost all of their productivity. This has had a cascading effect on people’s livelihoods and
income. It is likely to take some months or even years to recover from the storm’s impacts.
(IDMC, AFRICA REPORT ON INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT , 2019)

2.3 THE ROLE OF WATER SCARCITY IN INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT

2.4 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IV AND DV

2.5 SUMMARY

2.6 CONCLUSION
REFERNCES:

IDMC. (2020). NO LAND, NO WATER, NO PASTURE’.

https://www.internal-displacement.org/sites/default/files/publications/documents/202003-
somalia-slow-onset.pdf

IDMC. (2019). AFRICA REPORT ON INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT .

https://www.internal-displacement.org/sites/default/files/publications/documents/201912-
Africa-report.pdf