NCEA Advice on Sustainable programme development in Somalia

This paper has previously been published by the Netherlands commission for environmental assessment (NCEA).

The NCEA has drafted an advisory report at the request of the Netherlands Embassy in Kenya, concerning Somalia. The request concerns the following: Assess the Embassy’s current policy for Somalia (Multi Annual Country Strategy- MACS and commitments 2019-2022) on its contribution to sustainable development, taking into consideration the effects of climate change. The main question is: ‘how would we steer our programme to reduce social consequences of climate change’ and advise accordingly on the next strategy period. The advisory report is being prepared with inputs from 2 experts on environmental sustainability, climate change and socio-economic and institutional sustainability. One of the experts is Jos Meester, Senior Research Fellow at the Conflict Research Unit of Clingendael.

Significant details

The advisory report elaborates on climate impact on Somalia and the political economic constraints on climate impact. It summarizes the findings on the analysis of the current MACS, and provides recommendations on the way forward. The main message is:

• If the Embassy would like to focus on improving sustainability and climate change, it is not so much about the good ideas (because they do exist), but more about making someone responsible for them (because there is no such person now) due to lack of state in Somalia.
• Support is now focused on interventions (= the what question), but not focused on analyzing who could do something about it (= the who question).
• The NCEA advises to explore what can be done working through private sector interventions and/or through local/tradtional government.
• In addition the NCEA gives some suggestions for implementation modalities, e.g. through applying a 'patchwork approach' and the integration in already existing policy fields of the Embassy.

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