By WDM
Garowe’s past holds a ghost of a different landscape. The late Abdirahman Shuke, former PDRC director, recalled a greener childhood. Today, the city is not just dusty; it feels like a stage for a dystopian drama where the wind is the primary antagonist. The surrounding countryside has become a grim theater of despair, where starving livestock, displaced herders, and charcoal merchants act out a final, desperate play that is consuming the last of the region’s natural wealth—a crisis enabled by political neglect.
The road east from Garowe to Bosaso, Puntland’s economic lifeline to the Gulf of Aden, is a monument to this political failure. This is not a route of development, but a funeral procession for the land itself. The highway cuts through a landscape so severely degraded it resembles a moonscape—a place where the wind now erodes the economy as fiercely as it does the soil, each gust carrying away another layer of Puntland’s future, a direct result of inaction.
If Bosaso is the beating heart of Puntland’s economy, then the surrounding environment is the life-support system that sustains it. That system is now in critical condition, and the diagnosis points to a failure of governance. The advance of desertification, the scouring of arable land by flash floods, and the relentless cutting of trees for charcoal are collectively suffocating the region’s economic potential. No port expansion or foreign investment deal can resuscitate an economy built on dead soil, a reality our leaders refuse to confront.
Confronted with this existential threat, the political response has been a masterclass in negligence. Leadership is preoccupied with divisive squabbles over E-Visa revenues, tribal posturing on social media, and the perpetual calculus of the next election. They are debating who should rule in Villa Somalia while the very foundation of Puntland’s prosperity—its land—turns to dust. We risk a future where Bosaso’s port imports food aid for a starving population instead of exporting livestock to sustain it, a direct consequence of political priorities.
Globally, this locally orchestrated tragedy is either ignored or met with cynical mockery. Climate deniers, from boardrooms to political rallies, dismiss the science as a hoax—a luxury of disbelief afforded to those not yet watching their livelihoods blow away on the wind. The West often frames climate change as a distant, political abstraction, while the Global South lives its brutal, tangible reality. Yet, this global indifference does not absolve Puntland’s own leadership; it makes their proactive role more critical.
It is time to stop dismissing this crisis as an unavoidable “act of God.” This is an act of man, and a failure of politics: a man-made apocalypse fueled by industrial emissions abroad and enabled by local short-sightedness and a catastrophic lack of governance.
WDM CALL TO ACTION
Climate change is not merely an environmental issue; it is the ultimate test of our political will. Puntland must choose to reforest or face irreversible decline. This demands immediate, concrete action that places responsibility squarely on the state:
· A Moratorium and a Mission: Enforce a ban on unregulated charcoal production and launch a massive, state-led reforestation campaign. For every tree cut, ten must be planted. This is a primary function of government, not an optional program.
· Accountability: Treat the export of charcoal not as commerce, but as an economic crime that mortgages the future for temporary gain. The law must recognize the gravity of this destruction.
· Political Reckoning: Make ecological stewardship the central metric of leadership. Any official who ignores this crisis must be held accountable at the ballot box before the next sandstorm buries Bosaso’s lifeline for good.
The alternative is not just a struggling state, but a cautionary tale of political failure written on the dust-blown shores of the Gulf of Aden.
WDM 