South Sudan’s petroleum and gas company, Pacific, has launched a campaign geared towards helping the country to achieve clean energy and boosting the efforts for environmental conservation.

The weeks-long campaign is based on sensitising residents within Juba and other states on the importance of using clean energy sources such as Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) in cooking as well as fostering adherence to green energy policy.

Armed with the LPG products, Pacific aims to penetrate the households and preach the message of efficacy in the use of products, fidelity to environmental conservation and reducing the deadly diseases emanating from the use of alternative non-renewable sources of energy.

The campaign runs in tandem by a 2020’s call to action by the South Sudanese undersecretary in the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Joseph Africano Bartel, who urged for vigilance against groups of people hell-bent on destroying the country’s forest cover.

South Sudan currently boasts of 191,667 square km forest cover, which is comparatively more impressive compared to her neighbours. However, Africano warned that this share is quickly being depleted and that the country could lose the war against illegal loggers if no swift remedies are sought.

He cited volatility in certain parts of the country as the contributor to the increased illegal logging because most law enforcers are not able to arrest all the criminal elements.

“The conflict has made it difficult for the ministry of environment to manage forests for the past five years according to the agreed standards because we will not be able to deploy our people to plantations and also manage the natural forests,” he told the media in Juba.

He proposed a raft of policies to guard the energy sector and bring sanity for the benefit of environmental conservation efforts.

He further said, “We should come up with energy policies that will be based on renewables such as hydro, solar geothermal and the use of gas. If we have all those energies, we will be able to reduce the pressure on our forests.”

Why LPG

A 2018 study by UNEP, titled: ‘South Sudan: first state of the environment and outlook report 2018’ states that close to 99 per cent of South Sudanese households depend on forests as the primary sources of energy.

With high dependence on firewood comes the need for a paradigm shift so that the households can start embracing the gas for cooking.

Also, the country will continue shouldering the medical burden by registering high hospital admissions for health problems related to the use of harmful sources of energy such as kerosene and firewood.

A peer-reviewed study published by ‘Science Direct’ in 2018 warned of high global mortality rates linked to respiratory diseases due to dependence on these energy sources.

The study is titled ‘Energy for Sustainable Development: An analysis of efforts to scale up clean household energy for cooking around the world’.

It partly reads: ‘‘Approximately 3 billion people, most of whom live in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, rely on solid fuels (i.e. wood, crop wastes, dung, charcoal) and kerosene for their cooking needs.

‘‘Exposure to household air pollution from burning these fuels is estimated to account for approximately 3 million premature deaths a year.’’

It then offers a solution by stating that ‘cleaner fuels – such as liquefied petroleum gas, biogas, electricity, and certain compressed biomass fuels – have the potential to alleviate much of this significant health burden.’