Teenage ‘climate champion’ fights to highlight South Sudan’s plight

• Published date: 05 April 2024
• Author: SALLY HAYDEN
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

in Juba Naomi Momone says she has never heard of Greta Thunberg or the Fridays for Future movement, but she certainly knows about climate change

The South Sudanese 14-year-old was one of two students representing South Sudan at Cop 28 in Dubai last year, an opportunity she came to through her involvement in a “child parliament” organised by international humanitarian organisation Save the Children. During an interview in South Sudan’s capital city Juba, Momone called climate change “the biggest issue we are facing as children”.

“The reason why I decided to be passionate about climate change is there are very many children in South Sudan who are affected,” she said. The landlocked east African country of roughly 11 million people has been called “one of the five most climate-vulnerable countries in the world” by the UN.

In March came a stark example of what Momone is talking about, as South Sudan’s education and health ministries called for schools to be closed for weeks amid an extreme heatwave, with daily temperatures rising above 40 degrees.

Displaced by flooding

“This month, particularly, it has really been bad,” she said. As many as one million people are also displaced by flooding in South Sudan each year. Momone said she is also sure the heatwave will affect farming, in a country where many people regularly go hungry. “Most of the families in South Sudan depend on the grazing of cattle and farming so this heatwave is going to affect them the most.”

Momone – who was wearing a T-shirt reading “climate champion” – said she first became interested in advocacy three years ago, when she joined Senior 1 (equivalent to third year in Ireland), and was given access to the internet.

She learned about climate change “through YouTube and social media. I decided to...