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South Sudan battles a four-year flood

A woman and child in their flooded village - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger
A woman and child in their flooded village - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger

In South Sudan, the dry season won’t come. The country is battling its fourth year of historic flooding, impacting one million citizens and submerging entire villages in its wake.

While flooding is not unusual in the east African country, the current scale and ferocity is.

“We are technically entering the dry season now, but water levels have increased again. The water extent seems to have increased by 3,000 kilometres in the past week – it is out of the ordinary,” said Charlotte Hallqvist, a UNHCR spokesperson speaking from the country’s capital Juba.

“The water from the previous floods is not disappearing before the next rains come down,” she added.

December to February are typically the driest months for the landlocked nation, where the rivers subside and the Sudd wetlands air out.

According to NASA, the unrelenting rains in recent years is causing rivers and wetlands to remain at record highs throughout the year.

“It's a chronically understudied region,” said Dr Liz Stephens, professor in climate risks and resilience at the University of Reading. She explained that the flooding is as a result of the rain that falls upstream in the basin, not locally.

“It will certainly take years for the floods from 2021 to recede, because the land is disconnected from the main river, so floodwaters have to evaporate rather than drain away,” Dr Stephens said.

Emergency meetings were held last week to assess the water levels.

A total of about 47,700 km² of land now appears to be under water, the UN said.

“There is no sign of the water receding. We are seeing a permanent climate change, permanent climate displacements,” Ms Hallqvist added.

The country is still reeling from a conflict which left nearly 400,000 people dead - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger
The country is still reeling from a conflict which left nearly 400,000 people dead - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger
Crops are being wasted, and livestock is dying - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger
Crops are being wasted, and livestock is dying - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger

The fallout of the multi-year flood has been – and continues to be – disastrous.

Mothers spend the bulk of their day scavenging for water lily bulbs to feed their children, while elderly couples stand waist-deep in the swamps trying to rebuild their dikes.

Drone footage shows the occasional roof of a house, crowns of Acacia trees, or snippets of road. The economic damage is estimated to be on the order of £542 million.

“It looks like the sea but you can see the tops of people’s homes,” said Ms Hallqvist.

Crops are being wasted, and livestock is dying – a tragedy for a country where 63 per cent are living in an emergency level of food insecurity.

An estimated 1.4 million children face malnourishment, and 2.9 million are on the brink of starvation. These figures have surpassed levels seen in 2013 and 2016, during the country’s brutal five-year civil war.

Across the country, thousands of people are being forced to move, perhaps permanently, from their traditional lands. Such a huge movement of tension is a tinder box for already fractious tensions.

“South Sudan is already fragile and insecure, and ethnic tensions are on the rise,” said Ms Hallqvist. “We are seeing traditional pastoralists can no longer use their lands and are moving into other lands, occupied by other sedentary communities. And that is causing conflict.”

The country is still reeling from a conflict which left nearly 400,000 people dead. The peace deal signed in 2018 has done little to stop endemic violence, and now some villagers have become trapped by new water borders – unable to flee outbreaks of fighting.

A total of two million people are displaced internally - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger
A total of two million people are displaced internally - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger
Some refugee camps have been cut off by water - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger
Some refugee camps have been cut off by water - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger

Meanwhile, a total of two million people are displaced internally, and a further 2.2 million are displaced in neighbouring nations.

Some of the refugee camps have been cut off by water, too, with boats driven by charity workers the only way in and out.

“One displacement camp basically looks like an island, surrounded by water, and only protected by these dikes,” said Ms Hallqist. “There is no road in or out.”

According to Médecins Sans Frontières, the stagnant water has also contributed to a rise of malaria and water-borne illnesses, and more frequent snake bites.

“It is important to ensure that wastewater systems in internal displacement camps are, as much as possible, resilient to flooding, because when these are impacted the incidence of water-borne diseases increases,” Dr Stephens said.

The stagnant water has also contributed to a rise of malaria and water-borne illnesses - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger
The stagnant water has also contributed to a rise of malaria and water-borne illnesses - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger
Boats driven by charity workers are the only way in and out of some communities - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger
Boats driven by charity workers are the only way in and out of some communities - Peter Caton/Action Against Hunger

Locals are working to establish new ways of living and incomes.

In Warrap State, small-scale farmers have started turning the floodplains engulfing their village into rice fields. Women in Unity State are taking part in a local initiative to make cooking fuel out of invasive water hyacinth weeds as an alternative to charcoal and firewood.

But Dr Stephens said there are no simple solutions to flooding in a country where the vulnerability of the population is driven largely by ongoing conflict.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Refugee Agency said the country’s crisis has been “forgotten” and remains one of its most underfunded.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted that South Sudan’s floods will only worsen with rising temperatures. However, Dr Stephens noted that there isn’t a great deal of understanding on how the country is affected by climate change yet, and that similar scale flooding happened in the 1960s.

Peter Caton’s exhibition will be at the Oxo Gallery February 8-19.

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