Camels have shaped Somalia’s cultural identity long before Somalia was sovereign.
When Somalia gained independence in 1960, Somalis found it fitting to describe the moment as “Maandeeq,” which means milk-camel, to stand as a symbolic name for their newly-acquired freedom.
Today, camels endure as a dependable resource and symbol of resilience for Somalis despite a decades-long humanitarian crisis marred by recurrent drought and violent conflict. Recognising the camel as a key indicator of stability and an important vehicle for peace presents an opportunity for enhancing political analysis.
The economic importance of camels to Somalia – home to the world’s largest camel population – cannot be understated: an astonishing 80 per cent of the population is engaged in livestock rearing for their livelihood, according to East Africa’s Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD).
At the community level, camels are customarily exchanged as part of marriages and, in many respects, are the building blocks of social mobility. But the value of the camel is not just economic; camels play important roles in traditional peacebuilding and conflict resolution.
As levers for negotiation, camels can be exchanged to help broker peace, resolve disputes, and establish friendly relations. They are important contingencies for preventing conflict escalation. Without them, the threshold to violent conflict becomes much shorter. Given the crucial stabilising role camels play, it is not difficult to imagine the volatility that could unfold in their absence.
Sadly, the camel population is dwindling. As the impacts of climate change have worsened, the once-abundant camel population is in decline with three million livestock being killed within the last two years. Somalia’s multi-year drought has already put pressure on basic resource needs, exacerbated a dire humanitarian crisis, and weakened the livestock industry. This trend will only continue as Somalia, according to the ND Gain Index, is the single most climate-vulnerable country globally.
A collapsing camel market may push Somali herders to move to already overpopulated urban areas or engage in camel raiding, which has long fueled cycles of revenge and violence. Fissures in society may widen into rifts without the camel as a peacemaker and bargaining chip within conflict dynamics. As vegetation and available water dwindle across the region, pastoralists are traveling farther distances in harsher conditions to keep their herds alive. Even still, scores of camels – valued by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) at over $900 per head – may die, potentially eliminating a pastoralist’s entire life savings.
At this point, herders and their families often view seeking refugee status as their only remaining option. As climate change continues to shrink the camel population, all pillars of civil society will be agitated. If even the camel, respected for its ability to withstand the harshest of conditions, cannot prevail in the face of climate change, how can the Somali population hope for peace to take root?
To prepare for the impacts of climatic shifts and shocks on the camel population and anticipate what that could mean for society, we can leverage science-backed empirical analysis and speculative thinking to address different scenarios.
Mitigating the worst-case scenario in the future begins with facing it in the present to chart out risk factors, prevention strategies, and interlinkages to other axes of stability. As peace and security analysts working at the frontlines of early warning analysis, we should contend with the question: “Imagine what would happen to Somalia if camels went extinct because of climate change?”
This is top of mind for the United Nations Transitional Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNTMIS), which works closely with communities on the ground for whom this is not speculative, but a present reality.
UNTMIS’ flagship Mataban Project addresses the cultural and economic significance of camels and other livestock in the high-conflict Mataban district of Hishabelle State to better understand the impact of climate change on local livelihoods and stability.
For climate-vulnerable regions like this, incorporating Traditional Ecological Knowledge into early warning systems is no longer an abstract idea, but a best practice.
After years of direct involvement with these projects as UNTMIS’ Climate, Peace and Security Advisor (CPSA), Chris Hodder has seen the promise of nature-based solutions firsthand. In his view, they are the key to unlocking more nuanced and context-specific political analysis frameworks.
Chris was the first ever Climate, Peace and Security Advisor deployed by the United Nations and is now one of the eight advisors across UN Special Political Missions and Peacekeeping Missions established by the Climate Security Mechanism to engage national and regional entities on climate-sensitive programming. They have an important role to play in ensuring the UN keeps pace with evolving conflict dynamics, especially when it comes to the still emerging field of Climate, Peace and Security.
Whether camels, cows, or clouds, unconventional indicators of instability are becoming more obvious to CPSAs as essential components of political analysis. As CPSAs interface with communities struggling to adapt to new climate scenarios, there is a clear need to breach the limits of what conventional signals of instability – like conflict data alone – can give us. Their critical work on-the-ground presents compelling cases for the broader adoption of nature–based solutions to conflict prevention across the UN.
Across our planet, nature plays a fundamental role in society's social fabric, functioning, and power relations. By including indicators such as the effects of climate change on animals, the relationship between people and nature, and its hidden signs of change, our analysis becomes more holistic and able to identify potential threats and risks to peace and stability. This approach enables people, governments and the UN to better prepare and adapt while limiting disruptive changes. Informed by futures thinking and exploration, we can pave the way for innovation to guide better interventions and deliver on mandates and responsibilities.
Source: UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (UNDPPA)
UNDPPA notes that observations and studies worldwide provide increasing empirical evidence on how climatic conditions and environmental degradation threaten people's livelihoods and livestock they depend on.
As these impacts continue to unfold and amplify, innovation through contextual “futures-thinking” and new, broadened forms of political analysis is needed to capture complexities rather than simplify them. A political analysis framework that acknowledges the interconnectivities between security and less salient indicators like animals or the human-nature interface, is now emerging.
It is crucial for political analysis to address the intricate and interdependent relationship between humans, animals, and nature, which are the foundation of social systems many societies are built upon. Without considering these ontological relationships, analysis will overlook vital warning signs, miss opportunities for targeted peacebuilding, and distort perceptions of conflict dynamics altogether.
