Understanding the Climate–Food–Conflict Nexus in Sudan

A better understanding of the climate–food–conflict nexus can help Sudan move beyond fragmented responses by showing how climate adaptation, food security, humanitarian relief, peacebuilding, land governance, and rural development are deeply connected. In the context of ongoing war, mass displacement, acute food insecurity, and institutional fragmentation, planning for Sudan’s future requires integrated responses that protect livelihoods, support resilience, address resource governance, and connect peacebuilding with food-system recovery.

In the context of the ongoing war, the nexus approach helps clarify what needs to be protected immediately. Food security is not only about food aid. It also depends on whether farmers can reach their fields, pastoralists can move animals safely, markets can operate, traders can transport goods, agricultural inputs can reach production areas, and humanitarian actors can access populations in need. When these systems are disrupted, climate shocks become more damaging, and recovery becomes harder.

 

This means that any response to Sudan’s current crisis should protect livelihood systems as well as provide emergency relief. Conflict-sensitive support to seeds, tools, veterinary services, water points, local markets, transport routes, and community-based food systems can help reduce the long-term damage of war. At the same time, humanitarian action must recognise that food systems themselves can become part of the conflict landscape: crops may be destroyed, livestock looted, markets attacked, aid blocked, and displacement used to reshape access to land and resources.

Selected readings

• FAO & WFP. (2024). Special Report: 2024 FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission to the Sudan. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme.
• Hanafi, H., Casteran, S., & Vu, M. (2024). If Bullets Miss, Hunger Won’t: Beyond the Numbers – Hunger and Conflict in Sudan. Danish Refugee Council, Mercy Corps and Norwegian Refugee Council.
• Hoffmann, A., Mohamed, M., & van den Tempel, L. (2024). Sudan’s Agricultural Input Supply in Times of War: Proposed Interventions to Counter the Unfolding Famine. The Hague: Clingendael Institute.
• Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. (2025). Sudan: Acute Food Insecurity Situation for September 2025–January 2026 and Projection for February–May 2026. IPC.
• Jaspars, S. (2018). Food Aid in Sudan: A History of Power, Politics and Profit. London: Zed Books.
• Kuemmerle, T., & Baumann, M. (2021). Shocks to food systems in times of conflict. Nature Food, 2, 922–923. doi:10.1038/s43016-021-00435-1.
• (2026). Sudan Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
• Wahlstedt, E., Sulieman, H. M. (2024). Supporting conflict-resilient food systems in Sudan. Conflict Sensitivity Facility (CSF).
• Young, H., Osman, A. M., Aklilu, Y., Dale, R., Badri, B., & Fuddle, A. J. A. (2005). Darfur – Livelihoods under Siege. Medford, MA: Feinstein International Famine Center, Tufts University.

A nexus perspective also matters for peacebuilding. Peace agreements often focus on ceasefires, power-sharing, security arrangements, and political transition. These are essential, but they are not enough if they do not address how people access land, water, pasture, markets, and livelihoods. In Sudan, many local conflicts are connected to wider national struggles over power and authority, but they are also experienced through everyday disputes over land use, mobility, farming boundaries, water points, forest resources, and local governance.

 

This means that future peacebuilding should include natural resource governance and food-system recovery as core components, not secondary development issues. Agreements need to protect civilians and humanitarian access, but they should also create space for restoring local mediation systems, reopening mobility corridors, resolving land disputes, supporting return and reintegration of displaced people, and rebuilding trust between livelihood groups.

 

For Sudan, peacebuilding should therefore connect national negotiations with local realities. A ceasefire may reduce direct violence, but if farmers cannot safely return to fields, pastoralists cannot access grazing routes, displaced people cannot negotiate land access, and communities cannot rebuild local institutions, food insecurity and resource conflict will persist. A nexus approach helps ensure that peace is understood not only as the absence of fighting, but as the rebuilding of social, economic, and ecological conditions for coexistence.

Selected readings

• African Union & IGAD. (2025). African Union Commission and IGAD Welcome Quad Outcome on Sudan. African Union.
• Bromwich, B. (2018). Power, contested institutions and land: Repoliticising analysis of natural resources and conflict in Darfur. Journal of Eastern African Studies, 12(1), 1–21. doi:10.1080/17531055.2017.1403782.
• Buchanan-Smith, M., & Bromwich, B. (2016). Preparing for peace: An analysis of Darfur, Sudan. In C. Bruch, C. Muffett & S. S. Nichols (Eds.), Governance, Natural Resources, and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding. Routledge/Earthscan. doi:10.4324/9780203109793-7.
• de Waal, A. (Ed.). (2007). War in Darfur and the Search for Peace. Cambridge, MA: Global Equity Initiative, Harvard University.
• Flint, J., & de Waal, A. (2008). Darfur: A New History of a Long War. London: Zed Books.
• Sulieman, H. M. (2026). Protecting Pastoral Mobility in Wartime Sudan: Evidence and Policy Priorities from Eastern Sudan. Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute.
• United Nations Environment Programme. (2007). Sudan: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment. Nairobi: UNEP.
• United Nations Environment Programme. (2014). Relationships and Resources: Environmental Governance for Peacebuilding and Resilient Livelihoods in Sudan. Nairobi: UNEP.
• United States Department of State. (2023). Jeddah Declaration of Commitment to Protect the Civilians of Sudan. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State.
• Young, H., & Ismail, M. A. (2019). Complexity, continuity and change: Livelihood resilience in the Darfur region of Sudan. Disasters, 43(S3), S368–S387. doi:10.1111/disa.12337.

A better understanding of the nexus can improve how policies and development programmes are designed. Sudan does not only need emergency food assistance, climate adaptation projects, or peacebuilding programmes in isolation. It needs integrated planning that recognises how food systems, climate risks, and conflict dynamics interact. For example, agricultural recovery programmes should consider security, land rights, displacement, local markets, access to finance, and conflict sensitivity. Climate adaptation programmes should consider governance and local dispute-resolution systems. Peacebuilding programmes should consider livelihoods, food access, and environmental stress.

 

This is especially important because poorly designed programmes can unintentionally worsen tensions. Development interventions can also reinforce old inequalities if they ignore customary institutions, gendered access to resources, or displaced populations. A nexus approach can help planners ask better questions: Who gains access? Who loses access? Does the intervention strengthen coexistence or create new competition? Does it support flexibility in dryland systems, or does it impose fixed land-use models that do not fit local realities?

 

There are already examples of policy thinking that move in this direction. UNDP’s climate-resilience work in Sudan aims to strengthen resilience in traditional rainfed agricultural and pastoral systems by improving food production, climate-resilient water access, and institutional capacity to manage climate impacts. The Conflict Sensitivity Facility’s work on Sudan’s food systems similarly argues that food-system support must be conflict-sensitive and attentive to the direct and indirect impacts of war on agriculture, finance, markets, and livelihoods.

Selected readings

• FAO & WFP. (2024). Special Report: 2024 FAO/WFP Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission to the Sudan. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Programme.
• Mortimore, M., Anderson, S., Cotula, L., Davies, J., Faccer, K., Hesse, C., Morton, J., Nyangena, W., Skinner, J., & Wolfangel, C. (2009). Dryland Opportunities: A New Paradigm for People, Ecosystems and Development. Gland/London/Nairobi: IUCN, IIED and UNDP/DDC.
• NUPI & SIPRI. (2022). Climate, Peace and Security Fact Sheet: Sudan. Oslo/Stockholm: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
• O’Brien, J. (1985). Sowing the seeds of famine: The political economy of food deficits in Sudan. Review of African Political Economy, 12(33), 23–32.
• Oesterdiekhoff, P., & Wohlmuth, K. (1983). The “breadbasket” is empty: The options of Sudanese development policy. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 17(1), 35–68.
• Pantuliano, S. (2010). Oil, land and conflict: The decline of Misseriyya pastoralism in Sudan. Review of African Political Economy, 37(123), 7–23. doi:10.1080/03056241003637847.
• (2020). Building Resilience in the Face of Climate Change within Traditional Rainfed Agricultural and Pastoral Systems in Sudan. United Nations Development Programme.
• Wahlstedt, E., Sulieman, H. M. (2024). Supporting conflict-resilient food systems in Sudan. Conflict Sensitivity Facility (CSF).
• United Nations Environment Programme. (2007). Sudan: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment. Nairobi: UNEP.

Planning a better future for Sudan also requires recognising the coexistence of different livelihood systems. Farming, pastoralism, agro-pastoralism, irrigated agriculture, forestry, trade, and seasonal labour are not separate worlds. They overlap through land use, markets, labour, livestock routes, water points, crop residues, social relations, and local institutions. Conflict often emerges not simply because different groups use the same resources, but because the rules that manage shared access become contested, politicised, or weakened.

 

A better nexus understanding can therefore support coexistence by focusing on negotiation, flexibility, and shared benefits. For example, farming can support food production and rural livelihoods, but expansion into rangelands or blocked migration routes can increase tensions. Pastoral mobility can support livestock production and food systems, but it depends on access to corridors, water, and grazing.  Irrigated schemes can improve production, but they may also transform land rights and labour relations. The aim is not to freeze livelihood systems in place, but to create institutions that allow them to coexist under changing environmental and political conditions. Examples include customary arrangements for seasonal mobility, negotiated access to water and pasture, use of crop residues after harvest, and local mediation of disputes.

 

This is especially important for post-war recovery. Return, resettlement, land rehabilitation, and agricultural recovery may create new disputes if they are not conflict-sensitive. Programmes need to consider who used land before the war, who occupies it now, who has been displaced, who has customary claims, and how future access will be negotiated. Rebuilding coexistence, therefore, requires more than technical solutions. It requires trust, mediation, fair resource governance, and recognition of the different livelihood systems that make up Sudan’s rural economy.

Selected readings

• Assal, M. A. M. (2006). Sudan: Identity and conflict over natural resources. Development, 49(3), 101–105. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100284.
• Brottem, L., McDonnell, A. (2020). Pastoralism and Conflict in the Sudano-Sahel: A Review of the Literature. Conflict Sensitivity Facility – Sudan.
• Chavunduka, C., & Bromley, D. W. (2011). Climate, carbon, civil war and flexible boundaries: Sudan’s contested landscape. Land Use Policy, 28(4), 907–916. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2011.03.007.
• El Zain, M. (2006). Ruling elite, frontier-caste ideology and resource conflicts in the Sudan. Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 3(1), 36–47. doi:10.1080/15423166.2006.221681318062.
• Gaiballa, A. K. (2011). Natural Resources, Governance and Pastoralism in Sudan. Feinstein International Center, Tufts University.
• Pantuliano, S. (2010). Oil, land and conflict: The decline of Misseriyya pastoralism in Sudan. Review of African Political Economy, 37(123), 7–23. doi:10.1080/03056241003637847.
• Sulieman, H. M. (2026). Pastoralist Mobility Choices and Resource Access. International Journal of the Commons.
• Sulieman, H. M., & Young, H. (2023). The resilience and adaptation of pastoralist livestock mobility in a protracted conflict setting: West Darfur, Sudan. Nomadic Peoples, 27(1), 25–56. doi:10.3197/np.2023.270102.

Resilience should not be understood simply as people’s ability to survive a crisis. It is the capability to recover after a “disturbance”, back to the level that described the system before the disturbance occurred.  In Sudan, many communities have shown remarkable capacity to adapt to drought, floods, conflict, displacement, and market disruption. However, resilience can be weakened when people are repeatedly exposed to shocks without support, protection, or recovery time. If households sell livestock, abandon farms, lose access to land, reduce meals, or move into unsafe areas, they may survive temporarily but become less able to cope with future shocks.

 

Adaptation, therefore, needs to support the systems that make resilience possible. For farmers, this may include secure access to land, seeds, tools, irrigation repair, local markets, climate information, and rural finance. For pastoralists, it may include mobility corridors, negotiated access to water and pasture, veterinary services, livestock markets, and protection from violence. For displaced people, it may include access to land, labour opportunities, social protection, and safe return or integration options. For all groups, adaptation must recognise that climate risks are experienced through social and political conditions.

 

A nexus approach is useful because it distinguishes between short-term coping and long-term resilience. Coping may keep people alive during a crisis, but resilience requires institutions, rights, mobility, infrastructure, markets, and trust. In conflict-affected Sudan, adaptation programmes that ignore violence, governance, and displacement are likely to have limited impact. Conversely, programmes that rebuild livelihoods, strengthen local institutions, and protect flexible resource use can contribute to both climate resilience and peacebuilding.

Selected readings

• Ahmed, S.M.; Dinnar, H.A.; Ahmed, A.E.; Elbushra, A.A.; Turk, K.G.B. 2024. A Deeper Understanding of Climate Variability Improves Mitigation Efforts, Climate Services, Food Security, and Development Initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa. Climate 12, 206. https://doi.org/10.3390/cli12120206
• Akoy, E. O. M., Sabbil, A., Altoom, M. B., Nurain, S., & Salim, E. E. (2025). Climate Change, Conflicts and Food Security in North Darfur State, Sudan: Risks and Implications. Sudan Working Paper 2025:4. Bergen: Chr. Michelsen Institute.
• Krätli, S., El Dirani, O. H., & Young, H. (2013). Standing Wealth: Pastoralist Livestock Production and Local Livelihoods in Sudan. United Nations Environment Programme and Feinstein International Center, Tufts University.
• Krätli, S., Hülsebusch, C., Brooks, S., & Kaufmann, B. (2013). Pastoralism: A critical asset for food security under global climate change. Animal Frontiers, 3(1), 42–50. doi:10.2527/af.2013-0007.
• Krätli, S., & Schareika, N. (2010). Living off uncertainty: The intelligent animal production of dryland pastoralists. European Journal of Development Research, 22, 605–622. doi:10.1057/ejdr.2010.41.
• Mohammed Ali, I. M. (2019). The ecological, socio-economic and political constraints on pastoralists’ access to water, Blue Nile State, Sudan. Nomadic Peoples, 23(2), 282–302. doi:10.3197/np.2019.230207.
• Sulieman, H. M., & Young, H. (2023). The resilience and adaptation of pastoralist livestock mobility in a protracted conflict setting: West Darfur, Sudan. Nomadic Peoples, 27(1), 25–56. doi:10.3197/np.2023.270102.
• (2020). Building Resilience in the Face of Climate Change within Traditional Rainfed Agricultural and Pastoral Systems in Sudan. United Nations Development Programme.
• Wahlstedt, E., & Sulieman, H. M. (2024). Supporting Conflict-Resilient Food Systems in Sudan. Conflict Sensitivity Facility – Sudan.
• Young, H., & Ismail, M. A. (2019). Complexity, continuity and change: Livelihood resilience in the Darfur region of Sudan. Disasters, 43(S3), S368–S387. doi:10.1111/disa.12337.

The dryland paradigm is important because it challenges older views of drylands as naturally degraded, marginal, or unproductive. Sudan’s drylands are variable, but variability does not automatically mean crisis. Farmers, pastoralists, and agro-pastoralists have historically developed ways of managing uncertainty through mobility, flexible land use, seasonal adjustment, herd management, social networks, and local environmental knowledge. These strategies should be seen as forms of adaptation, not as signs of failure.

 

The drylands development paradigm is useful here because it treats drylands as complex social-ecological systems. It argues that dryland development must consider both environmental variability and human livelihoods, and that policy should support flexibility rather than impose rigid models of land use. This is highly relevant to Sudan, where many past policies have failed to recognise the value of mobility, customary resource governance, local environmental knowledge and diversified livelihoods. The drylands development paradigm approach helps navigate the complexity of desertification and dryland development by linking research, management, and policy.

 

For Sudan’s future, this means that recovery should not aim simply to restore pre-war systems as they were. Some of those systems were already unequal, fragile, and poorly supported. Instead, recovery should build more inclusive dryland governance: protecting mobility, supporting local markets, improving water access without creating new tensions, strengthening climate services, recognising customary and formal rights, and designing programmes around the realities of variable environments. In this sense, the dryland paradigm links directly to peacebuilding: it encourages policies that work with uncertainty rather than against it.

Selected readings

• Behnke, R. H., Scoones, I., & Kerven, C. (Eds.). (1993). Range Ecology at Disequilibrium: New Models of Natural Variability and Pastoral Adaptation in African Savannas. London: Overseas Development Institute.
• Ellis, J. E., & Swift, D. M. (1988). Stability of African pastoral ecosystems: Alternate paradigms and implications for development. Journal of Range Management, 41(6), 450–459.
• Mortimore, M., Anderson, S., Cotula, L., Davies, J., Faccer, K., Hesse, C., Morton, J., Nyangena, W., Skinner, J., & Wolfangel, C. (2009). Dryland Opportunities: A New Paradigm for People, Ecosystems and Development. Gland/London/Nairobi: IUCN, IIED and UNDP/DDC.
• Reynolds, J. F., Stafford Smith, D. M., Lambin, E. F., Turner, B. L., Mortimore, M., Batterbury, S. P. J., Downing, T. E., Dowlatabadi, H., Fernández, R. J., Herrick, J. E., Huber-Sannwald, E., Jiang, H., Leemans, R., Lynam, T., Maestre, F. T., Ayarza, M., & Walker, B. (2007). Global desertification: Building a science for dryland development. Science, 316(5826), 847–851. doi:10.1126/science.1131634.
• Safriel, U., & Adeel, Z. (2005). Dryland systems. In R. Hassan, R. Scholes & N. Ash (Eds.), Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Current State and Trends. Washington, DC: Island Press.
• Semplici, G., & Campbell, T. (2023). The revival of the drylands: re-learning resilience to climate change from pastoral livelihoods in East Africa. Climate and Development, 15(9), 779–792. https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2022.2160197
• Stringer, L. C., Reed, M. S., Fleskens, L., Thomas, R. J., Le, Q. B., & Lala-Pritchard, T. (2017). A new dryland development paradigm grounded in empirical analysis of dryland systems science. Land Degradation & Development, 28(7), 1952–1961. doi:10.1002/ldr.2716.
• Vetter, S. (2005). Rangelands at equilibrium and non-equilibrium: Recent developments in the debate. Journal of Arid Environments, 62(2), 321–341. doi:10.1016/j.jaridenv.2004.11.015.