The nexus between climate change, conflicts and food security in Somalia: empirical evidence from time-varying Granger causality

Abstract

Global food insecurity is projected to increase in distant years, which is challenging to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2, viz. zero hunger in 2030. However, recent reports and studies suggest that climate variabilities and conflicts are the main hurdles developing and less developed nations face to overcome food insecurity and hunger. This undertaking assesses the effect of climate change and conflicts (external and internal conflicts) on food security in Somalia. To this end, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, and time-varying Granger causality are utilized with annual data spanning 1985–2016. The empirical results show that average temperature and internal conflicts significantly hamper food security whereas rainfall and external conflicts are statistically insignificant in the long run. Besides, the time-varying Granger causality reveals that annual rainfall and temperature uniformly cause food security in two episodes (i.e. 1990–1992 and 2011–2012). Notably, Somalia experienced severe droughts which later led to a famine in 1992 and 2011. Similarly, both internal and external conflicts Granger cause food security in two similar episodes (i.e. 1990–1991 and 2010–2015). Our study underscores the importance of de-escalating the prolonged conflicts in Somalia and the need for designing policies that improve water availability to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.

Keywords:

• Somalia
• climate change
• conflicts
• food security
• time-varying causality
• ARDL

JEL codes:

• D74
• Q11
• Q18

Reviewing Editor:

• M. Luisa Escudero-Gilete, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain

Subjects:

• Sustainable Development
• Environmental Economics
• Statistics for Social Sciences

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Data availability statement

Data can be found at this link: https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCLhttps://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/somalia/climate-data-historical

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by SIMAD University.

Notes on contributors

Abdimalik Ali Warsame

Abdimalik Ali Warsame is a researcher and a lecturer at SIMAD University. He holds a Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in Economics from the SIMAD University and University Putra Malaysia, respectively. His research interests are focused on Agricultural economics, Environmental economics, Climate change econometrics Energy economics, and Health economics. He has over 30 peer- reviewed S/SCI-E and Scopus journal articles.

Ibrahim Abdukadir Sheik-Ali

Ibrahim Abdukadir Sheik-Ali holds a Master of Economics from the University of Malaya, Malaysia. Ibrahim is a researcher at SIMAD University. Prior to that, he worked as a Research Assistant and Senior Researcher in various institutions, including the Department of Economics, University of Malaya. His research interests are international economics, development economics, agricultural economics, and financial markets. Ibrahim has published his work in top journals in economics.

Abdullahi Abdirahman Hassan

Abdullahi Abdirahman Hassan is a researcher at SIMAD University, with experience in different areas. He worked at Golis Telecommunication as a Sales Manager. He also worked at Amal Bank as a Marketing Officer, and as a lecturer at The East African University. He is fluent in both English and the Somali language. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in Economics at the Amoud University in Borame. Also, he obtained his Master’s degree in Financial Economics from University Putra Malaysia in Serdang, Selangor. He has written various articles on economic issues in Somalia.

Samuel Asumadu Sarkodie

Samuel Asumadu Sarkodie is a multidisciplinary researcher with Ph.D. Environmental Science from Macquarie University, Australia, and MS. Sustainable Environment & Energy Systems. He’s currently a research fellow at Nord University, Norway. His research interest includes environmental and energy economics, Environmental health, Environmental modeling, Environmental policy, Climate change, Health impact assessments, Sustainable development, Air Pollution, and Sustainable management of the environment. He has over 100 peer- reviewed S/SCI-E journal articles and has reviewed over 900 pre-Publications in 165 international journals as a Verified Peer Reviewer. He currently serves as a subject editor for Sustainable production and consumption (Elsevier), Environmental Advances (Elsevier), Sustainability (MDPI), Clean Technologies (MDPI), and Earth (MDPI).