Somalia Needs National Afforestation Programme to Combat Desertification

In Somalia, trees are most often invoked as evidence of loss: absent canopy, failing rains, charcoal pits, and spreading wasteland. That portrayal is accurate — large swaths of the country endure repeated droughts, creeping desertification, and shrinking biomass — but it narrows the conversation to decline rather than possibility.

Estimates suggest more than 60 per cent of Somalia’s land shows signs of degradation and tree cover is among the lowest in the Horn of Africa. The causes are familiar: prolonged conflict, weak land stewardship, unregulated charcoal extraction, and the conversion of landscapes into low-yield uses. What receives less attention is how these ecological dynamics intersect with economic policy and the state’s capacity to act.

Seeing trees only as an environmental deficit misses a more consequential question: what if afforestation were framed not as a remedial response but as a deliberate instrument of economic policy and institutional development?

That shift is far from semantic. It changes how interventions are designed. Today, tree-planting in Somalia tends to be reactive — tied to humanitarian cycles, short donor windows, and one-off restoration drives. Those efforts are episodic, externally driven, and seldom sustained. Recast strategically, however, afforestation becomes part of a system that can be planned, financed and scaled as a component of national development.

The difference shapes ambition and action. Places that have expanded tree cover at scale did so by integrating planting into governance, labour mobilisation and long-term planning, not by treating seedlings as isolated inputs. Somalia faces a choice: persist with project-by-project responses, or begin to build afforestation as a strategic domain.

Afforestation as climate infrastructure

Globally, afforestation has quietly evolved into more than ecological repair. It is increasingly treated as climate infrastructure — an asset class that links carbon markets, rural economies and resilience investments.

This evolution reflects a wider rethinking of climate action. Nature-based solutions are moving from the margins to the center of mitigation and adaptation. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates such approaches could deliver up to one-third of the emissions reductions needed by 2030, with afforestation and reforestation playing a significant role.

Forests today are valued for measurable results — carbon uptake, soil stabilisation and water retention — outcomes that can be translated into financial and policy instruments. Afforestation and reforestation projects are among the most scalable categories within nature-based investments, and voluntary carbon markets are projected to expand into a multibillion-dollar sector over the coming decade.

Organised at scale, trees cease to be merely biological assets and become elements of an economic system. That is why major programmes in countries like Ethiopia and China have been implemented as state-led initiatives embedded in national development plans. Their success hinges less on counting saplings and more on the institutional machinery that enables planting at scale.

For Somalia, that institutional distinction is decisive. Awareness of degradation exists; what is missing is the framework to convert it into sustained, structured action. Without it, planting efforts remain fragmented and fail to accumulate into systemic change.

The finance constraint

Somalia’s current approach is especially exposed when viewed through the prism of climate finance. Afforestation sits within one of the fastest-growing areas of the global economy. Worldwide climate finance now exceeds $1.3 trillion a year, yet fragile and conflict-affected states capture only a tiny fraction.

Nature-based interventions feature more prominently in international funding agendas, creating entry points for mitigation and adaptation funding. But access is not automatic; it comes with conditions that go beyond environmental urgency.

To draw climate finance, countries must define land-use strategies, set credible baselines and operate monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) systems. They need institutions that can design programmes, manage funds and demonstrate measurable performance over time. Practically, afforestation must be packaged as investment-ready projects that meet global financing standards.

Climate finance therefore functions less as pure redistribution and more as conditional access. It rewards not only need but preparedness. States that can turn environmental challenges into structured, financeable programmes attract resources; those that cannot remain marginal, regardless of their exposure.

Somalia’s experience reflects this pattern. Despite acute vulnerability, its interaction with climate finance is limited and fragmented. Current climate-related inflows are estimated in the hundreds of millions annually — a fraction of what is needed to address systemic degradation. Afforestation efforts exist, but they are not embedded in a system able to operate at scale, secure long-term investment, or generate durable economic value.

Consequently, Somalia engages with climate finance more as a recipient of isolated projects than as a strategic participant.

From projects to systems

The central gap is structural rather than programmatic. Afforestation in Somalia is dominated by discrete, time-bound projects that rarely cohere into a long-term plan. What is missing is a national programme: a system to organise these efforts within a single framework.

Transitioning from projects to a programme requires rethinking how afforestation is governed and financed. At minimum, a national land-use framework should identify priority areas for planting based on ecological, economic and social criteria. Even a modest plan to restore one million hectares over a decade — a small share of degraded land — would mark a substantial increase in ambition.

The economics of scale are clear. Restoring drylands typically costs between $300 and $1,000 per hectare depending on species, survival rates and management. That translates into a multi-hundred-million-dollar programme at scale — an amount within the remit of climate finance instruments but only if the programme is structured to meet their requirements.

Institutional alignment is equally critical. Afforestation spans environment, agriculture, water and planning. Without a coordinating mechanism, efforts stay fragmented. A national programme would need defined roles, responsibilities and coordination channels so tree planting becomes an integrated development activity rather than a peripheral add-on.

Technical capability matters as well. Access to climate finance and carbon markets demands MRV systems that convert ecological outcomes into measurable metrics. Without these systems, linkages to results-based financing and carbon revenues remain tenuous.

Sustainability also depends on local ownership. Afforestation cannot rely on external inputs alone; it must be woven into local economies so communities have incentives to protect and expand tree cover. That calls for a shift from episodic tree-planting to ecosystem management that supports livelihoods.

An economic proposition

Seen this way, afforestation is not just an environmental cost but a potential economic engine. Properly designed, it can stabilise farming systems, cut vulnerability to climate shocks and create substantial employment.

In similar dryland contexts, restoration programmes have generated significant rural work, especially during land preparation and planting phases. Even conservative estimates suggest a national programme in Somalia could create tens of thousands of seasonal and semi-permanent jobs in rural areas with few alternatives.

Long-term benefits extend beyond jobs. Better soils, reduced erosion and increased water retention can boost productivity, while carbon sequestration opens doors to carbon markets. Carbon revenues alone are unlikely to fund large programmes, but they can contribute a valuable secondary income stream when combined with other financing sources.

This is not to portray afforestation as an easy fix. It demands long-term commitment, institutional capacity and steady funding. Yet that very complexity is its strategic value: afforestation sits at the crossroads of environmental restoration, economic development and financial planning.

As Nicholas Stern has argued, climate policy challenges lie not only in mobilising finance but in using it effectively. The same applies here: degraded land does not automatically attract investment. It must be translated into structured programmes that satisfy a global system increasingly focused on performance and accountability.

A question of direction

For Somalia, the debate is not whether trees are needed — they are. The question is whether afforestation will remain a marginal activity or become a deliberate development strategy.

That is fundamentally an institutional question. If trees continue to be an environmental afterthought, afforestation will stay limited in scale and impact. If instead tree planting is recognised as climate infrastructure — integral to economic planning, resilience and finance — it can reshape the country’s development pathway.

The task is not merely to plant trees but to build the systems that allow trees to produce value: to move from scattered interventions to structured programmes, from external dependency to internal capacity, and from environmental emergency to economic strategy.

Shifting from scarcity to strategy means understanding that afforestation is about restoring land and about constructing the institutional architecture required to sustain and monetise those restored landscapes.

Eng. Ahmed Giumale is the Executive Director of the Green Finance & Development Institute.