Johannesburg — Somalia lost many things as a result of having no government for over a decade during the 90s, but one of the least obvious was an ability to protect its environment.
With no authority in Mogadishu to defend fish stocks, fragile coral reefs and already slender tree resources, it has been open season for international companies and private individuals to exploit and pollute as they wish. Waste dumping on Somalia's coast soared, as did the flushing of ship's waste tanks; in the north-east of the country, precious and scarce old-growth acacia trees were cut down by armed groups to make charcoal for export to the middle-east; environmental degradation and desertification intensified throughout the decade.
But one woman has been of critical importance in Somalia's environmental crisis. Now in her mid-fifties, Fatima Jibrell has made it her life's work to fight back. She founded the Horn of Africa Relief and Development Organization (Horn Relief) in the early 1990s and also coordinates the Resource Management Somali Network (RMSN), which includes environmental groups throughout the Horn of Africa.
Working with rural communities, she aims to promote careful use of fragile resources and campaigns with women and young people for peace. Apart from waging a major campaign to end the use of valuable old trees for charcoal, she teaches techniques for coping with drought and water scarcity including the use of small rock dams to trap rainwater and help vegetation get a toehold.
In 1999, Horn Relief organized a peace march in north-eastern Puntland's main town to stop the "charcoal wars". Eventually, as a result of Jibrell's lobbying, the Puntland government banned the export of charcoal in 2002 and has since enforced the ban, leading to an 80 per cent reduction in exports.
In April 2002, her work brought her the Goldman Environmental Prize, given annually to grassroots environmental campaigners from six geographical areas and often called the "Nobel Prize for the Environment." Akwe Amosu asked her about her life and work.
Where did you grow up?
I was born into a family of pastoralists who grazed along the coast, using both fisheries resources and grasslands.
Somalis are pastoralists by nature, seventy percent of them, moving from one place to another with their livestock, looking for grasslands and water. A limited number are coastal people and live off fisheries. However pastoralists also move to the coastal areas looking for grasslands and make use of fisheries. I come from that group.
Between the ages of five and six, I and my mother moved to town - that's how I got my education - I got urbanized. I come from the part of Somalia that used to be former British Somaliland. So I came from Sanaag, moved to Burao to get my early education. I moved to Hargeisa to work, and then after independence, moved to the capital, Mogadishu; it was a very absorbing environment, which turned the country into one city-country. That's where I lived for many years. And I also lived many years of my life in Baidoa.
So you know your country very well.
Yes I do. In fact with the Resource Management Somali Network, I traveled the pastoral areas throughout Somalia, north and south and Somaliland too, and I have confidence to go wherever I need to go, I never had any problem.
What got you interested and involved in Somalia's environmental problems?
Coming from a pastoral background and a fishery background, I knew that this was the base [of society]. We did not have money when I grew up. We were in a barter system. You could trade dried smoked fish for dates, rice, maize, milk, meat, honey, and clothes. Also my mother's family were traders. And they had dhows [sailing ships] taking these Somali products to India and Arabia and bringing back clothes.
We lived in this environment where we did not really need money. But the invention of money has created greedy mega-companies in Europe to come - and the European Union subsidizes these ships - to come to our coasts to suck out the marine resources, destroy the reefs. They are also doing waste-dumping.
I don't know how bad that waste is, but I am telling you, we stopped swimming in the sea. Last time I went in, I came out with patches of blue, black and green and it took me six months to get that off from my skin. I had to collect it and take it to labs in Kenya to find out whether it is an extreme toxic or not. Most of it is tar.
The ships, when they looted fish, and after they did their waste dumping, also flushed their cleaning system into our coast so they do not have to pay money on their coasts to do that. They do not want to use the system set up in their own ports.
So that's what got me. And that's why a lot of fish are coming out dead. People are getting suspicious and stopping fishing altogether, because they think everything is poisoned.
So your history made you aware of the environment. But at what point did you start to become an active environmentalist?
During these last ten years, when we did not have any government, every Somali had to ask himself or herself about the fact that there is nobody looking after the environment. There is a lot of importation of guns from Europe, there is no responsible institution to safeguard resources. So it's all for grabs.
The fact that I loved my grasslands and my marine resources, that I used them in my life, that I knew the value was much more than dollars and European currencies, and much more than gold and diamonds and oil - I had to think that if that is exhausted, where are we gong to go? And that's what drives me.
We have nowhere else. We are being pushed out of Europe as illegal immigrants. We are being pushed out of the Gulf countries as illegal immigrants and immigrant workers. Illegal immigrants are being dropped in the unsafest places in Somalia, in Mogadishu. Nobody is asking them: "Where in Somalia are you from?" They are shipped in airplanes and dropped in the middle of the worst, violent places. And they are being killed there.
We cannot let [the] international world sack our resources, destroy our environment and say "No you have to stay in that destroyed environment, you cannot share the wealth that we took to Europe and America." And at the same time they are saying: "Hey, you Muslims are becoming Bin Ladens. We have to monitor you. You should close Muslim schools, because you are graduating Osamas." What alternatives do people have, when they have been made very, very angry and frustrated?
We are the biggest market for the guns made by Europe. Our charcoal and fisheries are being sacked by Europe and Arabia and we are becoming the wastebaskets of Europe. What do they expect us to do? We are people. We have brains. We will swim, we will come to Europe, we will be sent back and we will keep coming to Europe and Arabia. The only safe way for them and for us is to leave our environment intact and leave us alone.
What do you say to people who say this is actually a Somali problem, it is because you do not have a viable state and a viable government that your land is open to be raped like this.
If we are the biggest dumping ground for ammunitions and small arms, how are we supposed to have governance? You tell me. If we are deprived to the poorest environment and our resources are not there and we are like chickens, given some crumbs, fighting over a little WFP [World Food Program] food; even though our farms in the South are producing their corn, that free food is being dumped, so our farmers cannot sell and we are destroyed left and right, in every way, every manner. How can we create? We are busy surviving. We are busy like chickens eating each other. If you make chicken hungry, they pick on each other. And that's what we are doing. We are picking on each other.
But going back to the days of Siad Barre, and the politicians who led the country into this situation, do you still say that this is all a problem provoked by outsiders? Or was there some responsibility on the part of the leadership of Somalia?
Well, at this stage, we are not going to say we are saints. We have many warlords. They all have their families in Europe and America and they are all given free tickets to Kenya and Ethiopia, and the international community is giving them opportunities, just telling them: "Agree on how you share power and create your own little dictatorship in Somalia."
You see, international and powerful countries and neighboring countries all have a hand in it. If they take their hands off, if we are not having guns coming into Somalia, if the warlords are not being facilitated, and not given free tickets by the UN, the EU, and USAID and other organizations, then that is the time when we can focus on what Somalis can do. But when many hands from outside are coming, it is not within our reach, our power.
It is not about how and who to blame. I am not blaming. I am saying, "let us do something here. Let us come together." And we want the citizens of the world to realize the part their governments have in this. You help us take your countries out of Somalia, so we can focus on our problems and try to do something.
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You've worked on many different issues but you've had a lot of success in the campaign to stop charcoal production. Why is that so important?
Well, we have limited forests and the grasslands are based on forests, acacia forests. And these grasslands are being burned because acacia forests are being turned into charcoal by these young men who have guns. And the communities cannot say or do anything. It's full gag on the community. Then they burn it, turn it into charcoal and sell it to Arabia and the United Arab Emirates mostly. And we are asking the Saudi Arabian government and the United Arab Emirates government to stop importing charcoal from Somalia because we don't have the power to stop it inside Somalia.
Do you have now a body of support in Somalia that works with you on these issues? Have you been able to build up a strong campaign with grassroots people?
Yes, but they are not people with guns, so we are less strong. Our voices are not very much heard and the international media is not there. So it's well-built, well-founded, as far as grassroots level is concerned. By the way, it is the Resource Management Somali Network that is doing everything on the ground. I am just bringing their message here.
The communities, especially the women and the youth, are training themselves, sharing information, getting skills in leadership, so that younger people will not join those who have guns and so we can stop producing that gun-bearing male youth who is really ready for hire if he doesn't have a job. They are human. When we talk to them and ask them "Why are you doing this?" they say: "Here, have the gun and give me a job and I'll stop it." And we do not have an answer.
You have a big environmental problem but you say you can't solve that problem without solving the entire problem of the Somali nation. Doesn't that make it very daunting?
In fact I don't think about the magnitude because if I get overwhelmed, I won't do anything. But I see the small steps we are taking and we see results. And people like you are taking our message to communities who care. And then we hear from them. And I think in one year or two we might have a big conference about Somalia by the whole world from civil society organizations only, not by the government.
