South Sudan Natural Resources Review
2025
World Bank Group
South Sudan’s extensive renewable natural resources are critically important to its predominantly rural population, which relies on largely subsistence livelihoods and has limited access to the market economy. Until recently, almost all South Sudanese lived directly off the land, while colonial and northern administrators and traders inhabited the limited urban centers. Recent decades of conflict have seen widespread displacement and rapid urban growth, but most of the population is still rural and relies mainly on subsistence lifestyles. A low human presence has left the country with vast areas of largely natural habitat that remain critical to sustaining livelihoods. Approximately 75 percent of the population relies directly on local ecosystems for essentials like food, clean water, and energy (Fedele et al. 2021). Large Nilotic tribes like the Dinka, Nuer, and Shilluk all depend on their livestock resources and access to vast areas for grazing, as well as wild foods and medicinal plants (Grosskinsky and Gullick 2000). Populations along the Nile and its central wetlands depend to a large extent on fish, and some communities in areas of richer soils have substantial histories of sedentary agriculture. Communities displaced or cut off from regular livelihoods during conflict often turned to bushmeat for survival.
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