Oil and opportunities for development in Somalia
For a country that has been at the bottom of global rankings on the basis of transparency, human development, passport power, and safety, oil is seen as a source of hard currency to turn things around and fuel development.
Potential discovery of oil risks eroding the small steps Somalia has taken towards stability
On 2 December 2018, the United States Department of State announced the re-establishment of “permanent diplomatic presence” in Somalia nearly three decades after closing the US embassy in Mogadishu at the onset of the Somali conflict in 1991.
Downward spiral of conflict and famine in Somalia is due to the absence of good governance, not climate
Somalia is mostly dry and semi-arid with the exception of few areas of greenery in the northern mountains or the riverine agricultural fields in the south. Since the acceleration of violence in the late 1980s that propelled it into civil war, two things have been occurring in Somalia on a more or less regular basis: conflicts and famines, and both have been linked, in one way or the other, to climate change