Somalia Environment - 2022

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES 

Environment - current issues

water scarcity; contaminated water contributes to human health problems; improper waste disposal; deforestation; land degradation; overgrazing; soil erosion; desertification

Environment - international agreements

party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Climate Change-Paris Agreement, Desertification, Endangered Species, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection

signed, but not ratified: Nuclear Test Ban

Air pollutants

particulate matter emissions: 29.51 micrograms per cubic meter (2016 est.)

carbon dioxide emissions: 0.65 megatons (2016 est.)

methane emissions: 20.13 megatons (2020 est.)

Climate

principally desert; northeast monsoon (December to February), moderate temperatures in north and hot in south; southwest monsoon (May to October), torrid in the north and hot in the south, irregular rainfall, hot and humid periods (tangambili) between monsoons

Land use

agricultural land: 70.3% (2018 est.)

arable land: 1.8% (2018 est.)

permanent crops: 0% (2018 est.)

permanent pasture: 68.5% (2018 est.)

forest: 10.6% (2018 est.)

other: 19.1% (2018 est.)

Urbanization

urban population: 47.3% of total population (2022)

rate of urbanization: 4.2% annual rate of change (2020-25 est.)

total population growth rate v. urban population growth rate, 2000-2030

Major infectious diseases

degree of risk: very high (2020)

food or waterborne diseases: bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A and E, and typhoid fever

vectorborne diseases: dengue fever, malaria, and Rift Valley fever

water contact diseases: schistosomiasis

animal contact diseases: rabies

note: on 21 March 2022, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Travel Alert for polio in Africa; Somalia is currently considered a high risk to travelers for circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses (cVDPV); vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) is a strain of the weakened poliovirus that was initially included in oral polio vaccine (OPV) and that has changed over time and behaves more like the wild or naturally occurring virus; this means it can be spread more easily to people who are unvaccinated against polio and who come in contact with the stool or respiratory secretions, such as from a sneeze, of an “infected” person who received oral polio vaccine; the CDC recommends that before any international travel, anyone unvaccinated, incompletely vaccinated, or with an unknown polio vaccination status should complete the routine polio vaccine series; before travel to any high-risk destination, the CDC recommends that adults who previously completed the full, routine polio vaccine series receive a single, lifetime booster dose of polio vaccine

Food insecurity

exceptional shortfall in aggregate food production/supplies: due to drought conditions and internal conflict - an estimated 6.7 million people are expected to face severe acute food insecurity between October and December 2022, including about 300,000  people facing “Catastrophe” levels of food insecurity, resulting from consecutive poor rainy seasons since late 2020, which severely affected crop and livestock production, and due to heightened conflict since early 2021; famine is expected to occur in Bay region between October and December 2022 if humanitarian assistance is not urgently scaled up (2022)

Waste and recycling

municipal solid waste generated annually: 2,326,099 tons (2016 est.)

Major aquifers

Ogaden-Juba Basin

Total water withdrawal

municipal: 15 million cubic meters (2017 est.)

industrial: 2 million cubic meters (2017 est.)

agricultural: 3.281 billion cubic meters (2017 est.)

Total renewable water resources

14.7 billion cubic meters (2017 est.)

NOTE: The information regarding Somalia on this page is re-published from the 2022 World Fact Book of the United States Central Intelligence Agency and other sources. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Somalia 2022 information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Somalia 2022 should be addressed to the CIA or the source cited on each page.