Floods, fires, failure: North Africa’s climate and governance crises

Disbelief turned to desperation and anger as Libyans struggled with the aftermath of unfathomable floods that as of Thursday have left more than 5,200 people dead and 10,000 missing.

Outrage simmered among Libyans as relief efforts stalled, water and fuel shortages intensified, and the failures of Libyan authorities became clearer. Some project the death toll could climb past 20,000 in coming days.

While the catastrophic storm that hit Sunday was unprecedented, experts and residents say Libyan officials’ mismanagement and neglect may have cost thousands of additional lives. There were mixed messages sent to the public, years of warnings about aging dams that were ignored, local officials overruled by military and paramilitary groups, and a broad lack of emergency planning.

Libya’s floods and other historic climate disasters hitting North Africa this year – including wildfires and drought in Tunisia and Algeria – are exposing poor or absent governance, breaking what is left of citizen trust in their leaders, and leaving communities vulnerable to extreme weather events, forced to cope on their own with little forewarning or resources.

“This shows the importance of elections. It is not about liberal democracy – it is about knowing there is a relationship between the government and the governed. In Libya there is no relationship,” says Anas El Gomati, director of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute, a Libyan think tank. “It has led to disastrous negligence of the worst order.”

Two governments, little governance

Efforts by the Red Crescent and the United Nations are ongoing to reach those still trapped and find shelter for the estimated 40,000 displaced Libyans. The efforts are particularly focused in the hard-hit coastal city of Derna, a town of 100,000 people where Sunday floods swept away entire neighborhoods, dragging them out to sea.

War-torn Libya is home to two rival governments, neither proving its ability to govern in the wake of the floods.

In the west, the Tripoli-based government is led by businessman and Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh. The east is nominally governed by the Benghazi-based Libyan government, in de facto control of the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) and its commander, warlord Khalifa Haftar.

The disaster has placed a focus on the LNA, which rules the area hardest hit by Storm Daniel and is home to marginalized communities that have historically opposed Mr. Haftar.

The eastern Libyan government is reporting severe shortages in rescue teams, forensics equipment, DNA testing kits, rubber boats, and body bags.

Rescue teams had yet to reach several villages as of Thursday. Bodies line the streets of Derna, where locals struggle to keep up with even more washing ashore.

Both governments in the west and east ignored flood warnings by Libyan meteorologists a day before Storm Daniel made landfall, leading to widespread calls for an investigation. 

Instead of evacuating the tens of thousands living in flood plains, the eastern Libyan government and military reportedly instructed citizens to shelter in place on Sunday, imposing a 48-hour curfew. Entire extended families were inside their homes when their buildings were swept away to sea.

“An authoritarian government structure is not equipped to address the phenomena of climate change as it requires openness, creativity, and the ability to share information,” says Mr. El Gomati.

Libya, like the rest of North Africa, is witnessing rising sea levels, eroding shorelines, flooding, higher temperatures, and worsening drought. The region is warming at a rate nearly twice as fast as the rest of the world, on pace to warm by 4 degrees Celsius by 2050.

In 2022, a study from Libyan Sebha University warned that accelerated erosion left populations in low-lying coastal areas like Derna at risk of floods and that dams built in the 1980s were decrepit.

When Storm Daniel hit, two aging dams burst, turning torrential rains into a biblical flood that swept downhill to Derna and outlying villages.

An LNA spokesperson told BBC Arabic on Wednesday that “we don’t know for certain whether regular maintenance of the dams has been carried out.”

Local officials and residents say the dams were not kept up, despite money earmarked for repairs. Oil-rich Libya, which has a government surplus, has years of missing and misspent funds.

“For the last four years there was money and no war. You would think the ruling elites would rush and do the right thing by maintaining infrastructure, but they didn’t,” says Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya expert and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.

Instead, oil revenues went to fuel subsidies and grand projects that their allies could profit from.  

“When you are stealing money and need to placate the public, maintenance is not something you spend money on, particularly in a municipality that you hate,” Mr. Harchaoui adds.

Libya lacked a functioning weather service, despite previous concerns raised to the governments by the World Meteorological Organization, which on Thursday said such services could have “avoided most of the human casualties.”

Fire, drought

When fires ravaged Algeria and northwest Tunisia for the second summer in a row in late July, with unprecedented winds turning the flames into towering infernos, officials and residents were unprepared.

Due to drought, the Tunisian water distribution company had cut off water supplies to villages in the affected areas, leaving residents to battle blazes with bottled water as they waited military planes to douse the fires. They evacuated in their own cars or on foot.

In the northwest Tunisian village of Maloula, a pine-lined mountainous area overlooking the Mediterranean, residents have yet to rebuild from a fire that destroyed two dozen homes and turned 50 acres into ash.

More than a month later, residents are struggling to pick up the charred pieces.

Following a visit by Tunisian President Kais Saied, residents say there has been no follow-up. All they have received are some bundles of used clothes and a few bags of dried pasta from Tunisian charities.

“Not one official has come to our aid. Not the president’s political movement, no governor. Not a single person has called us,” says Samir Malmeisi, looking lost in his own charred-out, wall-less kitchen in late August.

“We have no resources; we have no money. We have lost all that we had, and we are confronting climate change on our own.”

Fatima Malmeisi, an 80-year-old Maloula resident distantly related to Samir, sits by the shell of her home, with little left but a collapsed roof and burnt bed.

“This home is all I had,” she says. “Where is the compensation? Where is the government? Where is the state?”

Lack of local authority

Centralization of authoritarian rule in recent years has left many North African communities on the front lines of climate change with little local governance.

Eastern Libya was due to hold local elections this month. Derna, which has been under an LNA-handpicked mayor and de facto military rule since 2018, was to elect its mayor and city council, with candidates registered and posters put up across the town – before LNA-aligned brigades threatened and intimidated candidates. Elections were postponed.

As Storm Daniel approached, the Derna mayor’s calls for citizens to evacuate were ignored by the ruling military and drowned out by its orders and text messages instructing citizens to shelter in place.

In Tunisia, Mr. Saied fired all the mayors and dissolved municipal councils in March, effectively erasing local governance overnight.

Maloula and other fire- and drought-hit towns and villages have been without mayors or councils or local strategies to cope, monitor, and raise the alarm for climate disasters.

The U.N. on Thursday hailed the cooperation between the two rival Libyan governments, but it remained unclear whether either unelected government had an understanding of the needs of flood-stricken areas – or how much aid will be lost to graft.