SUSTAIN: standing up multi-hazard early warning in South Sudan

The capacity gap

South Sudan’s communities and productive sectors face climate impacts at a scale the country’s institutions were never resourced to track. Without dense observation, quality-controlled data and a working dissemination channel, a hazard is only recognised once it has already arrived.

SUSTAIN, implemented by ICPAC with UNDP South Sudan and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, treats that as an infrastructure problem as much as a knowledge one.

Component one: the early warning backbone

The first component establishes the infrastructure and mechanisms for an effective and robust early warning system.

• Installation of automatic weather stations and hydrometeorological equipment

• Data management systems and quality-controlled climate data processing

• Geospatial mapping and forecasting support

• Revival of the Multi-Hazard Early Warning Technical Working Group

The four workstreams

Beneath the components, the work resolves into four practical streams that run in parallel.

• Data generation and climate monitoring — automating acquisition through hydrometeorological stations

• Early warning systems — Earth observation platforms for hazard detection and response planning, plus baseline assessments and Standard Operating Procedures

• Capacity building — technical training guided by baseline surveys that identify the priority gaps

• National Climate Outlook Forums — engagement through the Early Warning Technical Working Group and the Husika mobile application

A whole-of-government coalition

Delivery runs across the ministries that would each have to act on a warning: Environment and Forestry, Agriculture and Food Security, Water Resources and Irrigation, Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Health, Livestock, Energy, Transport and Roads — alongside the South Sudan Meteorological Service, the University of Juba and conservation partners.

Coordination of that breadth is the point. A multi-hazard warning is worth issuing only if the institutions that must respond to it are already reading from the same forecast.

Where Husika fits

Husika is named in the programme as a channel through which national climate outlooks reach people. Once stations report, data is quality-controlled and a forecast is agreed, the platform carries the resulting advisory to communities over SMS, voice, mobile and the web — and carries feedback back to the institutions that issued it.