Climate Security in South Sudan: Findings from the 2024 Public Perceptions of Peace Survey

Authors: David Deng, Sophia Dawkins, Tim Epple, Christopher Oringa, and Jan Pospisil

This policy brief presents data on perceptions of climate security from the most recent wave of the South Sudan Public Perceptions of Peace Survey. The 2024 round of this poll captured the views of 4,769 South Sudanese in 15 locations across all ten states and one administrative area, encompassing urban, rural and internally displaced person (IDP) camp environments.

For the first time, this survey has been able to show that across South Sudan, people are not just aware of climate change, but that they have also experienced adverse effects of climate change on livelihoods, displacement, and conflict. There is a need for coordinated action by the government and international partners to strengthen climate security, adaptation, and disaster preparedness.

South Sudan faces a unique climate challenge in that its population already grapples with acute humanitarian needs driven by violent political conflicts, hyperinflation and forced displacement, exacerbated by the war in neighbouring Sudan. Climate extremes interact with these humanitarian conditions to produce an ever-more complex crisis. There is a mutually reinforcing relationship between climate change and conflict. On the one hand, armed conflict, particularly through its impact on food security and displacement, increases the population’s vulnerability to climate extremes. On the other hand, climate extremes reinforce conditions of marginalization, exploitation, and social disintegration that are conducive to intercommunal violence.

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