By Duol Peter Lam
June 19, 2022 — More than 835,000 people are being affected by the flood in South Sudan, according to the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs. Record rainfall in the past years and overflowing rivers have flooded thousands of hectares of farmland in eight states and prevented people from cultivating. Nearly 800,000 livestock are thought to have perished.
UN Children’s Fund(UNICEF) said that some 490,000 of the victims are children, hence urgent action is needed to protect the already vulnerable populations from its worst impacts.
Now the question is what can be done to save lives?
Multi-programs are needed for long term and short term solutions. Dam is one of the long term best solutions but temporarily due to the fact that South Sudan is a fragile country crippled by it naïve system of governance, we must, however, accept dredging even if it wouldn’t solve the flood influx for long time. Moreover, a tremendous awareness is needed for the South Sudanese on why is dredging crucial at this time.
From my point of view, our dysfunctional government didn’t realize the importance of educating the citizens about these kind of natural disasters since they are just busy looting the country and I understand this is what confounded many South Sudanese including the educators of different professions. The flood mitigation needs collective national effort from top to the bottom. Thus I call upon the National minister of environment to be proactive and advocate for the importance of dredging the two rivers (Naam and Lake Noh) at this moment instead of contradicting and relying on the baseless fictions that lack scientific proofs. And in fact the environmental ministry might have taken this matter fiercely into an action point before these devastating consequences but unfortunately the ministry have been so dysfunctional due to the fact that the occupiers have been less aware of their roles.
For proper understanding, climate change has severely affected the entire region of east Africa wherefore countries like Uganda and Kenya experienced too much rainfall and this causes the water level to rise in Lake Victoria, which in turn forced the hydroelectric dam in Uganda to release large volumes of water. And eventually this has led to rising water levels in the White Nile.
Hence the discharge of white Nile made it channels become completely full wherefore the too much rainfall in the country impacted this water level on the other hand, and consequentially the river overflown its banks that results to this devastating flood. However , climate change is not the only cause to the intensity of the flood in the country ,it can also be attributed to the way people deal with water. Forests are being cut down and overgrazing loosens the topsoil. As a result, the water is no longer retained, flowing away faster and causing an increase in flooding.
I support dredging for the following reasons;
1.Flood Mitigation:
Rivers that are not maintained collect a tremendous amount of silt, sand, and sedimentation, which can cause the river to bottleneck. Bottlenecking limits a river’s ability to flow naturally and to cause water levels to rise in other parts of the river and exceed its riverbanks. When an excessive amount of water enters a sediment-filled watershed at a rapid pace, flooding occurs. Hence, dredging are used to remove excessive sediment from the river. Eliminating this sediment reestablishes channel width and depth, stabilizing the surrounding embankment, and curtails future shoreline erosion.
People in the other countries depend upon rivers as sources of food, fresh water, and transportation. But unfortunately over time silt, sediment, and other deposits accumulate, often obstructing or altering a river’s natural flow, and vitality. Therefore, river dredging projects are used to curtail erosion, deepen navigational channels, and stop the flooding.
South Sudanese must understand that dredging is crucial for preserving the natural flow of a river and reduces the potential of a likely disaster from re-occurring in areas that are prone to reoccurring flooding during rainy seasons. Dredging is not a draining, dredging is something normal everywhere no matter who is technically executing the project, dredging has nothing to do with our Sudd land, dredging project is completely different from Jonglei canal project, dredging River Naam and Lake Noh is only means for saving lives. Simply that is what our social media warriors need to understand.
2.Prevention of erosion:
When a river channel is disturbed, riverbanks in other parts of the river begin to slowly erode as sediment from the initial point of contact gradually flows from that site to one farther down the river. As a result, a river’s speed increases, causing severe riverbed and riverbank erosion to occur, weakening other parts of the river channel. Over time, sediment deposits increase the worsening conditions of a river system.
3.Maintaining River Channel Depth:
River channels gather natural and manufactured debris over time, which requires frequent maintenance dredging to maintain proper channel depth. As sediment increases at the bottom of the river, it reduces the depth of the river.
Those are the reasons I’m in to the dredging project.
Meanwhile climate change is a global issue, it is felt on a local scale. My country folk must understand that the fight is not only for the national government it takes our collective effort even though the national government must always be at the front line. For instance in the absence of national flood policy direction, cities and local communities around the world have been focusing on solving their own climate problems. Human acts such as environmental degradation, unsustainable exploitation of environmental resources and poor land use are the predisposing factors that takes our collective respond.Â
I call upon the South Sudanese netizens including the like of Dr. Peter Biar and Prof. Akech to stop spreading those baseless ideologies that lack proper scientific proofs, and focus on educating South Sudanese mass about the manmade disasters which involves issues like water pollution , cutting and burning down of forests plus other factors associated to poverty including lack of knowledge, technology to adapt or to be adequately prepared for disasters.
Multi-scientific investigations shows that the impact of climate change on the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and environmental degradation will increase displacement risk further. Hence, we must collectively be factored into a variety of development plans like: how to manage the increasingly extreme disasters we are seeing and their associated risks, how to protect coastlines and deal with sea-level encroachment, how to best manage land and forests, how to deal with and plan for reduced water availability, how to develop resilient crop varieties and how to protect energy and public infrastructure.
Finally, the relevant role for every patriot must be an advocacy that shall always push the government to take the lead on this matters, instead of waging conflicts and circulating baseless accusation on the other countries whose intentions is solidarity.
Duol Peter Lam is a civic nationalist. He can be reached through his email at duolpeter100@gmail.com
