Introduction
Sudan faces a compounded crisis: a deadly blend of conflict and economic hardship that intersects with climate change, environmental degradation, governance breakdown, and vicious cycles of conflict. This environmental degradation and ecological mismanagement have exacerbated resource scarcities and public health hazards, fueling social grievances in a country already beset by civil wars and political turmoil since its independence. Yet dominant positivist approaches to policy analysis, with their emphasis on linear stages, technical rationality, and objective problem-solving, often fail to capture the contested, socially constructed, and power-laden nature of environmental issues in fragile contexts like Sudan. By treating problems as neutral facts awaiting solutions, they obscure the role of narrative, legitimacy, and agency in shaping which issues are recognized, whose voices are heard, and how conflicts evolve. Hence, in moving past the dominance of prevailing positivist approaches, this analysis employs an interdisciplinary lens rooted in the sociology of social problems to interrogate how Sudan’s environmental crises have been framed or ignored over time, including any justifications; and how this framing has shaped policy action (or inaction) and conflict dynamics.
The dynamics of environmental grievances in Sudan are not simply technical challenges; they are embedded in broader struggles over narratives, priorities, power, legitimacy, and justice. The suppression of local claims has transformed ecological issues into catalysts that create deeper crises, as unresolved grievances accumulate and resurface in violence. In this sense, interpretatively, this demonstrates that environmental policy cannot be separated from broader questions of governance: who defines problems, who bears responsibility, and who gains or loses in their resolution. Understanding this nexus is essential for designing interventions that, beyond treating symptoms, can address the underlying structures that perpetuate vulnerability, exclusion, and disputes. This paper traces the historical and institutional trajectory of Sudan’s environment conflict crisis through four phases: (1) marginalization and disregard (pre-1990s), when environmental issues were ignored or suppressed; (2) official recognition and internationalization (1990s-2000s), when Sudan’s environmental problems belatedly received official recognition due to global contexts (often due to conflict linkages); (3) environmental integration into policy (2000s-2018), when the regime began incorporating environmental considerations in laws and treaties, though mainly in form rather than substance; and (4) post-revolution reframing (2019-present), when Sudan’s popular uprising opened space to redefine environmental issues within a justice and peace narrative, until the new conflict emerged. These stages reflect not linear progress but cycles of recognition without resolution. Each stage reveals blocked attempts to transform grievances into claims, showing how authoritarianism and conflict repeatedly reset environmental governance.
Across these stages, the paper highlights critical episodes that expose failures in claims made regarding environmental justice, from toxic and nontoxic waste dumping and pesticide scandals to climate discourses and communities’ struggles for redress. Drawing on Sudanese newspaper investigations, NGO reports, and studies, the analysis shows how these issues were repeatedly brought to light by claimants only to be met with issue reframing, denial, repression, confinement, or authorities’ inaction. We argue in this paper that for environmental policy to be effective, it must be designed in response to communities’ legitimate grievances and demands, rather than framed in ways that delegitimize their suffering or avoid their mobilization. The cases presented underscore how power asymmetries and secrecy have systematically blocked accountability. Using this framework, the paper demonstrates how governance failures at each stage prevented ecological crises from driving policy reform, instead allowing them to become catalysts of instability and violence. Ultimately, in analyzing the societal conditions under which environmental issues emerged as social concerns and tracing their transformation into public action, the paper illuminates the conflictual and demand-driven dynamics that shape the production of public policy.
The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.
