Karen Jacobsen teamed up with colleagues, Justin B. Hollander (professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts) and Christopher Schwalm and Alexandra Naegele (scientists at the Woodwell Climate Research Center) to discuss how the war in Sudan is contributing to the climate crisis for Tufts Now.

The authors explain that the refugees fleeing Sudan are most likely to end up in urban informal settlements. These settlements are some of the most densely populated places on Earth and new influx of refugees is causing them to grow even more rapidly. The authors’ climate modeling showed that informal settlements are at high risk for flooding today, and at an even greater risk in 25 and 50 years’ time, given projected increases in future seasonal rainfall. With flooding comes great risk to human life and property, threatening to wash away precariously built homes and the lives within them.

Without better alternatives, Sudanese refugees arriving in informal settlements in neighboring countries put themselves in a different kind of danger: environmental risk. Their arrival will further tax the fragile infrastructure of informal settlements and exacerbate existing flooding hazards. Sudan’s crisis can thus further inflame environmental risk in urban informal settlements across the region.

Read the full article here.