Irrigation  and water, crises faced subsistence farmers and livestock herders in revrineareas of lower Shabelle.

Rivers are major water resources in the world for domestic use, livestock, wildlife, irrigation, and other water supply demand by rural and an urbanized populations, as well as hydropower production. Somalia being a country situates in East of Africa has two rivers which originate in the highlands of Ethiopia. The country is mutually sharing these rivers with Ethiopia and Kenya as neighbor riparian sovereignties in terms of exploiting underground basins, tributary contributions to the rivers' runoff and other water utilization purpose¹.These two rivers which are the only two perennials and major water resources in southern part of the country are locally known as "Webi Shabelle and Webi Jubba". Likewise the rivers are both important water basin in southern Somalia which is therefore referred as ‘breadbasket’².

 Most of the country's northern part is typically arid, where the threshold ofevapo-transpiration exceeds the precipitation with having no permanent water flow, except temporal flows known as "toggs" particularly when the rainfall is high^2’3

"Webi-Shabelle" which is utilized by riverine farmers as a gravity fed-irrigation, due to having an altitude higher than the adjacent farm lands covers total distance of about 2526km. Nearly about two-third (63.5%)of river's basin area lies in Ethiopian territory and one-third (36.5%) in Somalia¹. The river passes three regions (Hiraan, Middle and Lower Shabelle),those are the country's major crop and livestock production, particularly being maize and sesame belt. These three agricultural regions in the revrine accompanied with few typical rain-fed mainly being sorghum belt had enabled to be the country's economic sector and employment activity, which contributed to achieve self sufficiency³. From the state failure emergence era and this current post-civil war, the country had hosted consecutive droughts faced the rural communities which caused severe starvations and food insecurity, resulted from anarchy outbreak reached even in rural land, which caused lacking infrastructural rehabilitation of the rivers. The country’s agricultural lands are both rain-fed and irrigation, in the riverine regions, gravity fed irrigations are mainly practiced as well using pumping engines, during low river flow in dry seasons.

 The irrigation availability of the areas along the river enabled to farmers to grow both rainy and dry seasons, but this is however impeded by the irrigation crises, because of low river flow. The subsistence farmers and livestock herders in Lower Shabelle particularly those live in the area from Doonbural, which places about 15km far away from southern-word Qoryoley district, to where the river ends are suffering water and irrigation crisis, due to very low river flow, which couldn't support both gravity fed and pumping irrigations. This is attributed to low contribution of tributaries from in and outside river basins, due to low rainfall and even locking the inside dams to maintain the remaining water and utilize for crop and livestock production in a particular area, which had caused severe circumstances to the farmers and the livestock herders those live in southern ward of riverine areas.  Ethiopia is also suspected to build dams for exploiting the water irrigating remote lands and hydropower production which can curtail the the river flow.

During the civil war the people in the riverine had been threatened by consecutive floods for the reason of high river flow in rainy seasons and lacking depressions for flood protection, combined by vandalism of the irversides as well as accumulation of sediment, due to high siltation of the river flow, which had caused the river to flood and destruct crop fields and rangelands as well as infrastructures.

Likewise in dry seasons, the farmers would be rarely faced river flow reduction, particularly in the onset of Gu' seasonsbut in the last year the conditions became so severe, the river flow had gradually decreased and then eventually dried .The irrigation crises resulted from this low water flow aggravated by low rain fall in the region particularly where the farmers and nomadic pastoralists are concentrated resulted proximally about half of the agriculture land to be uncultivated. "These irrigation farms are likely to shift into rainfed" says an interviewee,"so some small farmers had however introduced drilling wells for pumping irrigation practices" he added. But poor subsistence farmers are still suffering from severe water shortage.Enormous migration of young men from rural areas are consequences ofthis dire situation threatened to rural communities, particularly household farmers and livestock herders, " every household families' decision is to send one or more of the family members to the big cities for labor seek". said another interviewee while, he added that some of the families had sold their assets and entirely fled and joined in the IDP camps in the country and now live in  mediocre condition.

Numerous young men who used to engage growing the riverine farms faced frustration and, are currently fleeing from agricultural areas, and coming to the big cities,such as Mogadishu, Baidoa,  Hargeisa, Garowe and Bosaso to seek labor opportunities. Not only that, they are also getting treacherous migration to theoutsides, particularly western Europe and Saudi Arabia, some of them had lost their lives in remorseless sea. Those who had fled inside are engaging working in construction sites,being vendor, working wheelbarrows as a janitor, barbers and porter, "the water stream of the river is very low as well as the rainfall, so the farms became fallow and was filled with acacia trees" says an interviewee, who now lives in Mogadisho and works in Bakkaro market. Some of them had fled to Put-land and Somali-land  as a secure regions in a bid to create a small business and support their families.

To sum up,Shabellariver is among Somali's most important water resource, in terms of irrigation, and water supply demand as direct consumption ofboth the people and livestock. The riverimproves crop and livestock production, which both provide socio-economy growth and employment activity. Finally the river does not ordinarily flow to the Indian ocean, it ends to a depression area beyond Baraawe district, but it sometimes exceptionally adds to the ocean when there are heavy rainfalls in upper streams of Ethiopia and watersheds or tributaries those contribute the river flow. Written by Yasin Mohamed Ibrahim

                                                                References

1. AbdullahiElmi Mohamed (2013). Managing Shared Basins in the Horn of Africa – Ethiopian Projects on the Juba and Shabelle Rivers and Downstream Effects in Somalia. Natural Resources and Conservation, 1 ,35 - 49. doi: 10.13189/nrc.2013.010203.

2.Basnyat, D. B.  (2007), Water Resources of Somalia. Technical Report No W-11, FAO-SWALIM, Nairobi, Kenya.

3.Machiri P.W. (2017), Climate of Somalia Technical Report No. W-01 FOA-SWALIM  Nairobi Kenya.

Most of this report had been collected from the people who fled from the riverine in Lower Shabelle particular the rural communities live in between Qoryoley and Kurtunwaray districts.