Climate Change, Women's Livelihoods, and Adaptation Strategies in South Sudan: A Multi-State Analysis of Central Equatoria, Western Equatoria, Jonglei, and Eastern Equatoria

Climate change poses an existential threat to livelihoods across sub-Saharan Africa, with women in fragile and conflict-affected states bearing a disproportionate burden of environmental shocks. This multi-state study examines the nexus of climate change, women's livelihoods, and adaptation strategies across four states in South Sudan: Central Equatoria, Western Equatoria, Jonglei, and Eastern Equatoria. Employing a mixed-methods research design that integrates quantitative household survey data (N = 1,247) with qualitative insights from 48 focus group discussions and 32 key informant interviews, the study analyses how climate variability—manifested through prolonged droughts, erratic rainfall patterns, and recurrent flooding—differentially shapes women's agricultural productivity, food security, income diversification, and access to natural resources. Drawing on the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (Scoones, 2015) and feminist political ecology (Elmhirst, 2018), the findings reveal that women across all four states experience climate-induced livelihood disruptions at rates 34–47% higher than their male counterparts, with the most severe impacts concentrated in Jonglei due to compounded conflict and flood exposure. The study identifies five dominant adaptation strategies employed by women: crop diversification (78.3% of respondents), collective savings groups (64.7%), seasonal migration (41.2%), wetland cultivation (38.5%), and non-timber forest product harvesting (31.8%). Critically, the effectiveness of these strategies is mediated by state-level variations in institutional support, conflict intensity, and socio-cultural norms governing women's land rights. The paper advances a Gender-Responsive Climate Adaptation Index (GRCAI) that quantifies adaptation capacity acr