Context

Mundri West is located in the western equatorial state of South Sudan. Over the past five years, Mundri West has experienced intense impacts from climate change, such as flooding, droughts, and unpredictable rains. In 2022 the rains started and ended before time. Farmers did not have the time for field preparation and planting, resulting in them missing one harvest out of two annual agricultural seasons, with dreadful consequences for food stocks at the household level (CSRS, 2022).

The unpredictability of the weather has greatly affected its residents. With insufficient data, reliable information and infrastructure to support early warning systems, Mundri West residents are not able to prepare and cope with climatic events. Better climate resiliency is needed to protect South Sudanese citizens

HOT’s approach

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is collaborating with YEDA through the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) to implement The Climate on the Map Project that focuses on identifying climate-related risks and adaptation measures through community mapping.

The project's objective is to The project aims at promoting climate-smart disaster risk reduction and adaptation for local communities in Mundri West County, providing the right information and tools to cope with the negative impacts of climate change on health, displacement and livelihoods. This will be done using a two-fold approach based on early warnings, anticipatory actions for resilience-building, and sustainable efforts.

Key actions:

The project will focus on two elements: building the community knowledge and skill to prepare for climate-related risk and the second element is to strengthen anticipatory action and infrastructure resilience. This will include

1. Using participatory mapping, the Mundri West community should identify and document specific climate-related risks that affect them.
2. Supporting local communities by including them in but not limited to the identification of such issues as well as the mapping process; this way risks and adaptation modalities will be based on their past insights.
3. In light of the recognized dangers, suggest practical yet enduring adaptation strategies that can be realized by the community and endorsed by both local and international stakeholders.
4. Through education, management of resources and enforcement of adaptation practices, enhance the capability of local people to adequately answer climate issues and strengthen their power to withstand them.
5. To advance the creation and use of open map data. 

At the end of the project

The project will work with women, individuals with disabilities, youth, community leaders, the elderly, and displaced people to conduct a hazard and solution mapping exercise, develop an emergency preparedness plan that will benefit the community by ensuring that local response systems function successfully in the event of a disaster, and establish and build capacity for village savings and loan associations (VSLAs). The objective would be to

1. Improve the awareness of the community on climate patterns, resources available, and areas at risk of natural hazards and insecurity. This will be achieved through
2. Improve community resilience through the identification of risk prevention strategies and solutions to cope with climatic events
3. The local community has the structure and resources to better recover from climatic events and use resources more efficiently in case of such occurrences (economic resilience), including the ability to set up the preparedness measures identified to build resilience to climatic shocks.