I’m going do a thread on The effect of deforestation in Somalia and What we can do to counter it. Stay tuned

“Between 1990 and 2010, Somalia lost an average of 0.93% per year. In total, between 1990 and 2010, Somalia lost 18.5% of its forest cover. Before this somalia had 40,000 elephant. There was also couple of thousands lions but are now less then 500.

Somalia's forests contain 394 million metric tons of carbon in living forest biomass. Biodiversity and Protected Areas: Somalia has some 1078 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles according to figures from the World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

Of these, 6.1% are endemic, meaning they exist in no other country, and 2.8% are threatened. Somalia is home to at least 3028 species of vascular plants, of which 16.5% are endemic and 0% of Somalia is protected under IUCN categories I-V.

there were also 642 species of birds listed for Somalia, 222 mammals, 182 reptiles, 32 amphibians, and 3,028 species of plants that were known. All of them are going extent in Somalia or migrating. As for the plants, we lose abt almost 1% each year.

“The loss of trees and other vegetation can cause climate change, desertification, soil erosion, fewer crops, flooding, increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and a host of problems”

Forest are important for a lot of things but the major ones are that it prevents climate change and support wild life. As you know somalia has very hot climate locations, especially central/north and some part of the south.

If we start planting trees, Somalia could limit the effect of global warming. This would also make places livable. Animals would come back, flooding would decrease and agricultural would boom.

The good thing is President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud banned all exportation of charcoal, in line with a UN embargo in February. But it isn’t enforced due to many reasons.

In conclusion if deforestation continues at this pace, our country will be a desert in 2-3 decades and we can not have that.