Social media is teeming with mixed reactions to Egypt’s plan to dredge the Bahr el Ghazal River to reduce the flood risks in South Sudan. In addition to the mixed public reactions, South Sudanese officials continue to contradict one another in the media, signifying lack of consensus on the project within the government. The Press Secretary in the Office of the President said the President was not aware of the project. The Minister of Environment…
Entries by Nhial Tiitmamer
Charcoal is increasingly becoming a primary energy choice, accounting for 96% of cooking fuel for the growing urban population of South Sudan (NBS, 2012; Tiitmamer & Anai, 2018). Yet not much is known about the level of government regulation to make the woodfuel, especially the charcoal sector, sustainable. Using individual interviews and focus group discussions with charcoal producers, transporters, traders, soldiers and communities, this Brief identifies the following issues, and which demand the government’s urgent…
Publication Summary Local content requirements promote national capacity, employment, economic diversification, and economic growth (Kazzazi and Nouri 2012, Tordo et al., 2013). Local content develops capacities that link the oil and gas sector to other industries. While over 80% of the oil and gas sector’s workforce is South Sudanese, little is known about their earning levels, experience, and educational attainment, compared to their expatriate colleagues (Tiitmamer, 2015). This paper analyzes human resources data from two…
While South Sudan is endowed with 3.5 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the exploitation of this natural wealth is turning into a catastrophe for some local communities, particularly in Melut County. Through focus group discussions, individual interviews, and field observations, the authors found the following: Many households in Paloch, Melut County, are in close proximity to oil wells and facilities, and within a short distance of a large lake of toxic produced water, exposing…
This review explores the magnitude of this year’s flood and its impacts in Bor Town. We used a boat to get us around the town surveying the extent of flood water and measuring its depth in the streets and in the residential neighborhoods. We also used the GPS to capture the geographical coordinates submerged under water, showing exactly the depth of flood in the town by locations. Download
Publication Summary This paper reviews the existing literature to determine the adequacy of evidence and extent of the environmental impacts in the oil producing areas in South Sudan. The following is revealed: Evidence from previous studies shows that there is a serious environmental and social disaster in the three oil producing areas, even though such evidence does not generate enough consensus for the decision makers. Environmental impacts assessments (EIA) conducted before the oil operations reveal that (1)…
This year’s flood is one of the worst in South Sudan’s history. It has affected about one million people from 142,783 households in 8 of the former 10 states, compared to only 344,618 people in 2013. People lost homes, livelihoods, and shelter and got exposed to deadly diseases. Schools, roads, health centers and other useful forms of infrastructure have been destroyed. This year’s flood emanated from an Indian Ocean climate event known as the Indian…
This policy brief discusses how the recently proposed environmental and social audit of the petroleum companies’ operations by the Ministry of Petroleum can be conducted to generate scientific evidence that can assist in finding a permanent solution to pollution in South Sudan’s petroleum producing areas.
This paper reviews the existing transparency and accountability rules to understand the extent to which these have been implemented. Despite the existence of strong petroleum transparency and accountability legal rules, we find that compliance with them has worsened in the last three years. For example, only 26% of the information required by the petroleum laws has been published in 2019, compared to 42% in 2016. This seriously violates the petroleum transparency and accountability rules and…
South Sudan has experienced decades of protracted conflicts, some of which might have been caused in part or exacerbated by climate change and variability. Climate change causes scarcity of resources and forces communities to raid their neighbors or migrate to a new area to look for opportunities, which brings new arrivals into competition with the landowners, leading to conflicts (Homer – Dixon, 1994; Raleigh & Kniveton, 2012; Tiitmamer et al., 2017). Local level climate induced…