“Sudan has the real possibility of becoming the world’s largest humanitarian crisis,” World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain warned in June 2024. The International Rescue Committee has since declared Sudan as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

In addition to several million refugees who fled to neighboring countries, about 10 million Sudanese are internally displaced within the African Union member nation as a result of the conflict between the two warring factions. This has reduced the population in some areas while increasing it massively in others.

Abdel Fattah Hamid, a visiting junior professor at the Middle East Council on International Affairs, said that these migrations have far-reaching environmental impacts. He said that the influx of internally displaced persons into already vulnerable communities leads to degradation of local environmental resources, resulting in increased competition for limited resources, specifically fertile land and water, and this competition can lead to escalating tensions and hostilities between different groups, which are exacerbated by pre-existing political, tribal and ethnic divisions.

Shortages of cooking gas have forced citizens in Darfur to rely entirely on charcoal and firewood to cook food, resulting in increased logging and deforestation.

The lack of cooking gas dates to last year when fighting between the Sudanese military and its formerly allied paramilitary, the Rapid Support Forces, disrupted trade routes and caused suppliers to stop working in certain areas.

Darfur, which is mostly controlled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), is cut off from trade with Sudan’s Nile Valley heartland and Port Sudan. Some smuggled imports still arrive via Chad and South Sudan, but the transportation costs and dangers along these routes makes them prohibitively expensive for most traders.

Large parts of Darfur lack regular electricity for electric cooking and the main alternative cooking fuels are charcoal and firewood. As a result, demand for these fuels spiked, making the charcoal production and the cutting of trees a thriving trade.

Salwa Adam Abdullah, a housewife in the city of Al-Daien in East Darfur State, told Sudan War Monitor that cooking gas is not available as usual in the markets, and that they have completely switched to using charcoal and firewood to cook food, adding that the lack of gas has led to an increase in the prices of charcoal and firewood.

Ghada Abdullah, another South Darfur native, confirmed that gas has become almost non-existent in the markets, and the residents have become completely dependent on charcoal and firewood in cooking, noting the high prices of charcoal due to high demand. She said, “If we take the example of a small to medium-sized family, before the war, less than half a sack of coal with gas would suffice for a month. Now, the same family consumes three to four sacks of coal during one month.”

Sudan is in the Eastern Region of the African Union, one of five on the continent.  The African Diaspora makes up the Sixth Region, including the second most populous Black nation on earth, Brazil, and the United States.