From Competition to Cooperation: Environmental Governance and Natural Resource Management as Foundations for Reconciliation in Post-Conflict Sudan

Sudan's protracted wars created a tenuous socio-political landscape, split asunder by historical injustices over the control of assets, ethnic cleavages, and ecological devastation. This paper examines the strategic potential of Natural Resource Management (NRM) as a nexus to national reconciliation and sustainable post-war reconstruction in Sudan. Drawing on case study experience in Darfur and South Sudan and empirical research evidence, the research illustrates the potential evidenced through equitable, community-led environmental governance to mitigate resource-based tensions, promote joint institutions, and rebuild trust between fractured groups. The study concludes the potential rooted in access to the environment based on equality, participatory governance, and local ecological experience to become the nexus to stability in the long term. The research identifies the need to mainstream NRM in comprehensive peacebuilding agendas and illustrates the evidence-based fact that sustainable management of the environment is more than a development imperative but the key to peaceful and political cohesion and resilient recuperation.