Two Crises, One Bomb

Aerial bombardment of civilian infrastructure points in one direction.

And this matters enormously for accountability.

Y aquí está la conexión importante con el clima.

And here is the important connection to climate.

Kordofán está en el Sahel, esa zona entre el Sahara y las tierras más verdes del sur de África.

Kordofan is in the Sahel, that zone between the Sahara and the greener lands of southern Africa.

En los últimos cincuenta años, el Sahel recibió mucho menos lluvia que antes.

In the last fifty years, the Sahel received much less rain than before.

La tierra se convirtió en desierto.

The land turned into desert.

El agua ya era escasa antes de que llegara la guerra.

Water was already scarce before the war arrived.

The Sahel is one of the clearest illustrations on earth of what climate change actually looks like in practice.

Not statistics, not projections.

A belt of land drying out over decades.

The Sahara moving south at a pace that's been measurable since the 1970s.

And Sudan sits right in the middle of it.

La sequía en el Sahel empeoró mucho con el cambio climático.

The drought in the Sahel got much worse with climate change.

Las lluvias llegaron tarde, o no llegaron.

Rains arrived late, or didn't arrive.

Los agricultores perdieron sus cultivos.

Farmers lost their harvests.

Los ganaderos perdieron sus animales porque no había pasto ni agua.

Cattle herders lost their animals because there was no pasture or water.

Y entonces, la gente empezó a pelear por los recursos que quedaban.

And then, people began to fight over the resources that remained.

There's a UN Environment Programme report, written before this current war, that described Sudan as an epicenter of climate-driven conflict.

And the argument they make is subtle but important.

It's not that climate change caused the war.

It's that climate stress eroded the buffer.

When resources shrink, the political space for compromise shrinks with them.

Sí, y muchos investigadores están de acuerdo con eso.

Yes, and many researchers agree with that.

El clima no causó la guerra directamente, pero creó las condiciones para el conflicto.

Climate didn't cause the war directly, but it created the conditions for conflict.

Cuando no hay suficiente agua, la gente compite.

When there isn't enough water, people compete.

Cuando compite, los líderes militares y los políticos usan esas tensiones para ganar poder.

When they compete, military leaders and politicians use those tensions to gain power.

Es un ciclo muy peligroso.

It's a very dangerous cycle.

And then the war makes the climate crisis worse.

Which is the loop that makes this so hard to break.

You have a region already under environmental stress, the war destroys existing infrastructure including water infrastructure, and you create a humanitarian catastrophe that aid organizations can't easily reach because there's active fighting in the way.

Exactamente.

Exactly.

Y en Kordofán, antes de esta guerra, las comunidades ya dependían de pozos profundos y de estaciones de bombeo.

And in Kordofan, before this war, communities already depended on deep wells and pumping stations.

La lluvia era muy irregular.

The rain was very irregular.

Cuando destruyes una de estas estaciones, la gente no puede simplemente buscar otra fuente.

When you destroy one of these stations, people can't simply look for another source.

En muchas zonas, no hay otra fuente.

In many areas, there is no other source.

Help me picture this for listeners.

What does one of these water stations actually look like, and how many people is it serving?

Claro.

Of course.

En muchas partes de Kordofán, las estaciones de agua recogen agua de pozos muy profundos.

In many parts of Kordofan, water stations draw water from very deep wells.

Usan motores eléctricos y bombas para subir el agua.

They use electric motors and pumps to bring the water up.

Muchas familias, y también sus animales, dependen de una sola estación.

Many families, and also their animals, depend on a single station.

Si la destruyes, la gente tiene que caminar muchos kilómetros para encontrar agua.

If you destroy it, people have to walk many kilometers to find water.

En el calor del Sahel, eso puede matar.

In the heat of the Sahel, that can kill.

And this is where international humanitarian law comes in, because what we're describing isn't just morally monstrous, it's explicitly illegal.

Article 54 of the 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions prohibits attacking objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.

Water installations are named specifically.

Y sin embargo, pasa en muchas guerras.

And yet it happens in many wars.

En Siria también destruyeron infraestructura de agua.

In Syria they also destroyed water infrastructure.

En Yemen también.

In Yemen too.

Esta regla internacional existe desde hace décadas, pero nadie la respeta cuando hay un conflicto y no hay consecuencias reales para los que atacan.

This international rule has existed for decades, but no one respects it when there is a conflict and there are no real consequences for those who attack.

The enforcement gap is what makes humanitarian lawyers genuinely furious.

Emergency Lawyers is doing meticulous documentation, names, coordinates, dates, photographs.

The evidence exists.

But the enforcement mechanism for a recognized government committing these acts in a civil war is essentially absent.

The ICC has a Sudan case.

It's been going for twenty years and produced very little.

Para mí, la situación de Sudán es muy importante para el mundo porque muestra lo que ocurre cuando hay dos crisis al mismo tiempo: una crisis de clima y una crisis política.

For me, the situation in Sudan is very important for the world because it shows what happens when there are two crises at the same time: a climate crisis and a political crisis.

Muchos países en el Sahel van a tener estos dos problemas juntos en los próximos años.

Many countries in the Sahel will face both problems together in the coming years.

Sudán es un ejemplo muy triste de lo que puede pasar.

Sudan is a very sad example of what can happen.

I want to push on something though.

There's a real risk in leading with climate change as the primary driver, because it can inadvertently let the political actors off the hook.

Omar al-Bashir governed Sudan catastrophically for thirty years.

The military coup in 2021 was a political choice.

The war in 2023 was a political choice.

Climate stress was the dry tinder, but humans chose to light the match.

Tienes razón, y yo no quiero decir que el clima es la única razón.

You're right, and I don't want to say that climate is the only reason.

Pero el punto es que el clima hace todo más difícil.

But the point is that climate makes everything harder.

Cuando hay sequía y hambre, es más fácil para los líderes militares convencer a la gente de pelear.

When there is drought and hunger, it's easier for military leaders to convince people to fight.

La pobreza y la falta de agua crean frustración, y esa frustración tiene consecuencias políticas reales.

Poverty and lack of water create frustration, and that frustration has real political consequences.

And the research backs that up, even if the causal arrows are messy.

A 2019 study in Nature found a meaningful correlation between temperature anomalies and armed conflict risk across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Not a clean one-to-one, the researchers were careful about that.

But consistent enough that policymakers who ignore it are choosing to be blind.

Y mientras los países ricos hablan del clima en conferencias internacionales, los países que sufren más son países como Sudán.

And while rich countries talk about climate at international conferences, the countries that suffer most are countries like Sudan.

Ellos contribuyeron muy poco a las emisiones globales de CO2, pero pagan el precio más alto.

They contributed very little to global CO2 emissions, but they pay the highest price.

Eso me parece muy injusto.

I find that very unjust.

Sudan's per-capita carbon emissions are roughly one thirtieth of the American average.

One thirtieth.

And they're watching their water infrastructure get bombed in a war that climate stress helped enable.

That moral arithmetic is uncomfortable, and it should be.

Y lo que necesita Sudán no es solo paz.

And what Sudan needs is not just peace.

Necesita también inversión en infraestructura de agua, en agricultura resistente a la sequía, en educación.

It also needs investment in water infrastructure, in drought-resistant agriculture, in education.

Pero para hacer todo eso, primero necesita que termine la guerra.

But to do all that, it first needs the war to end.

Y la guerra no termina fácilmente porque hay muchos intereses externos que no quieren que termine.

And the war doesn't end easily because there are many external interests that don't want it to end.

The external interference in this war deserves its own episode, genuinely.

The UAE's documented support for the RSF.

Egypt's complicated alignment with the SAF.

Russia's Wagner network had fingerprints on Sudan before Wagner imploded in 2023.

It's a proxy conflict layered on top of a resource conflict layered on top of a climate emergency.

Three crises stacked in the same geography.

Sí, y eso es lo que hace la situación tan difícil de resolver.

Yes, and that's what makes the situation so difficult to resolve.

No hay una solución simple.

There is no simple solution.

Y mientras los países de afuera usan Sudán para sus propios intereses políticos y económicos, la gente de Kordofán no tiene agua para beber.

And while outside countries use Sudan for their own political and economic interests, the people of Kordofan have no water to drink.

I covered the Darfur crisis in the early 2000s.

Interviewed refugees in Chad who'd crossed the border with nothing.

And even then, there was this deliberate pattern of targeting infrastructure specifically because it breaks a community's ability to reconstitute itself.

Homes burn, you can rebuild.

Destroy the well, and you've ended the village.

Y ahora, con el cambio climático, las lluvias son todavía más irregulares que antes.

And now, with climate change, the rains are even more irregular than before.

Los pozos están más profundos porque el agua subterránea también disminuyó.

The wells are deeper because the groundwater also decreased.

Las estaciones de agua son más necesarias que nunca, y al mismo tiempo son más vulnerables porque la guerra llegó a esas zonas.

Water stations are more necessary than ever, and at the same time they are more vulnerable because the war reached those areas.

Which brings us back to where we started.

An airstrike on a water station in North Kordofan is a war crime under international humanitarian law.

It's also an attack on people already living at the very edge of what the climate permits.

Two crises, one bomb.

Exactamente.

Exactly.

Y hay algo que dijiste antes que quiero mencionar.

And there's something you said earlier that I want to mention.

Dijiste que el pueblo se quedó sin agua.

You said the town was left without water.

En español, esta expresión, quedarse sin algo, es muy interesante y muy útil.

In Spanish, this expression, quedarse sin something, is very interesting and very useful.

¿Sabes bien lo que significa?

Do you know well what it means?

Well, I know what the words mean individually.

Quedar is to remain or to stay, and sin is without.

But I have a feeling you're about to tell me there's something more specific going on.

Claro.

Exactly.

Cuando decimos quedarse sin algo, indicamos que antes había algo, y ahora no hay.

When we say quedarse sin something, we indicate that something existed before, and now it doesn't.

Hay una pérdida.

There is a loss.

Por ejemplo: el río se quedó sin agua en agosto.

For example: the river ran out of water in August.

No solo dice que el río no tiene agua, dice que antes tenía agua y la perdió.

It doesn't just say the river has no water, it says that before it had water and lost it.

Es diferente de simplemente decir el río no tiene agua.

It's different from simply saying the river has no water.

That's actually a meaningful distinction.

In English we'd use two different verbs: we don't have water versus we ran out of water.

Spanish folds that whole idea into one phrase.

Quedarse sin.

And it works for almost anything, I'm guessing.

Money, time, patience after listening to me speak Spanish.

Sí, exactamente.

Yes, exactly.

Me quedé sin paciencia es una frase muy útil cuando hablo contigo.

I ran out of patience is a very useful phrase when I talk to you.

Pero en serio, esta expresión es importante para entender las noticias de Sudán.

But seriously, this expression is important for understanding the news from Sudan.

Se quedaron sin agua.

They ran out of water.

Se quedaron sin comida.

They ran out of food.

Se quedaron sin nada.

They were left with nothing.

Son frases simples, pero describen algo muy grave.

They're simple phrases, but they describe something very serious.