Introduction
Somalia remains among the countries most severely affected by the accelerating impacts of global climate change. Communities across the country increasingly experience prolonged droughts, recurrent floods, extreme heatwaves, strong winds and storms, soil erosion and expanding sand dunes. These environmental stressors are not isolated events, they represent systemic risks that disrupt livelihoods, constrain water access, damage infrastructure, affect public health, interrupt education and contribute to displacement. The cumulative impact of these climate shocks continues to undermine socioeconomic stability and development progress, particularly in already vulnerable communities.
Youth and the Climate Knowledge Gap
While climate change is widely experienced at the community level, it is often insufficiently understood in scientific and policy terms. Limited access to climate information, weak engagement mechanisms, and minimal participation in environmental decision-making processes have historically constrained meaningful youth involvement. Given that young people constitute the majority of Somalia’s population, their limited engagement represents both a vulnerability and a missed opportunity. Youth are disproportionately affected by climate impacts, yet they possess significant potential to act as catalysts for community-level resilience if appropriately supported, organized and equipped with knowledge, skills and information.
Localized Engagement and Contextual Understanding
Recognizing both the urgency of the climate crisis and the transformative potential of youth leadership, YECO Somalia is implementing a climate change project in four districts in Galmudug State, Hirshabelle State and the Benadir Regional Administration. The project began with community-level consultations involving households, youth groups, and local community members to assess climate risks, vulnerabilities, and barriers to participation. These engagements revealed persistent gaps in climate literacy, limited structured adaptation initiatives and insufficient platforms for inclusive dialogue. Communities identified key environmental challenges including droughts, flooding, extreme heat, land degradation and strong winds, factors that continue to compromise resilience capacities. Importantly, consultations also revealed strong interest among young people to actively contribute to climate solutions.
Establishment of Local Climate Champions
In response, YECO Somalia identified 40 dedicated youth climate champions and established 4 climate networks, ensuring gender balanced representation of young women and men. These champions were organized into structured youth networks to promote peer leadership, collective mobilization and inclusive participation in climate action. The selected champions underwent targeted capacity strengthening initiatives aimed at enhancing their understanding of climate science, local environmental risks, adaptation strategies and community engagement methods. Training components included storytelling, advocacy techniques, climate change basics, risk mapping, and the planning of practical small-scale interventions tailored to local contexts. Through this structured investment, the youth climate champions emerged as informed advocates capable of translating climate knowledge into community-level awareness and action.
Platforms for Dialogue and Community Mobilization
To further institutionalize youth engagement, public climate forums were facilitated across the targeted districts. These forums provided structured and inclusive spaces for dialogue among youth, community members and local stakeholders. The forums encouraged knowledge exchange on climate drivers, local environmental impacts and feasible mitigation and adaptation measures. Participants demonstrated increased confidence in articulating climate concerns and proposing context-specific responses. More significantly, youth began to reposition themselves from passive recipients of climate impacts to proactive contributors to resilience-building efforts.
These combined interventions have contributed to strengthening community-driven climate resilience through enhanced climate awareness and knowledge dissemination at the local level, strengthened youth leadership and peer-to-peer mobilization, increased inclusion of young women in climate dialogue, and action, emergence of locally-led initiatives responding to environmental challenges and greater community ownership of climate resilience processes. By institutionalizing youth leadership structures and fostering inclusive engagement, YECO Somalia has reinforced the foundations of sustainable and locally anchored climate action.
As climate risks continue to evolve, Somalia’s most enduring resources remains its youth, organized, capacitated and prepared to lead the transition toward a more resilient and sustainable future.
