MOGADISHU, Aug. 18, (Xinhua/GNA) — The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the British embassy in Mogadishu on Wednesday, launched a 3.8-million-U.S.-dollar anticipatory action ahead of the El Nino event in Somalia.
The FAO said the anticipatory action and preparedness initiative, will target about 1.2 million people who are in areas at high risk of flooding, noting that there is now a greater than 90 percent chance that El Nino will continue through the end of the year. “We have a very short window of only a few months to prepare for and mitigate the worst impacts of El Nino. By taking early and well-informed action, together, we can help to protect vulnerable rural communities from the worst outcomes of disaster,” Etienne Peterschmitt, FAO’s representative to Somalia, said in a joint statement issued in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia.
The FAO said the project Badbaado, which means “to salvage from calamity,” is part of its multi-donor El Nino program, which seeks to mitigate, prepare for and respond to the threat of severe flooding and humanitarian disaster, during the country’s second major rainy season between October and December.
El Nino is a climate pattern, expected to bring about increased rainfall, with riverine areas of Somalia, particularly at risk of severe flooding. FAO said its Somalia Water and Land Information Management (SWALIM) Unit anticipates a major flood event of a magnitude statistically likely only once in 100 years, and follows another historic flood earlier this year that displaced around 245,000 people along the Shabelle River. “An El Nino-related flooding event in riverine areas of this scale could lead to loss of life, mass displacement, destruction of property and loss of livelihoods, resulting in an increase in acute food insecurity,” it said.
The FAO said in partnership with Somalia, it plans to close 937 meters of breakage points along the Shabelle River in Beledweyne town to slow down flood waters, reduce the immediate impact of flooding and allow people time to move away from high-risk areas. The project, it said, also plans to rehabilitate a major canal to redirect flood waters away from populated areas in Beledweyne, as well as prepositioning 800,000 sandbags in flood-prone areas.
GNA