Researchers have found that women and girls in the conflict-torn nation of South Sudan are facing greater health risks and worsened inequality due to the negative impacts of climate change as the country battles record-breaking heat.
The findings published ahead of International Women’s Day marked on March 8, by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group of scientists, said February’s heatwave was made about 10 times more likely – and 2 degrees Celsius hotter – by human-caused climate change.
Last month, heatwaves in the country saw dozens of students collapse from heat stroke in the capital Juba, causing the country to close down schools for weeks, making it the second time the country has shut schools during a heatwave in the periods between February and March. It did the same when temperatures reached as high as 45 degrees Celsius in March last year.
These occurrences are unusual as the hottest temperatures of the year are not usually expected to occur as early as February, when this year’s extreme heat was observed, said the researchers.
Most schools in the country are built with iron roofs that trap heat and do not have air conditioning, creating very hot conditions for students, WWA said in a statement. High temperatures are expected to persist throughout March.
In the face of these extreme weather events, women and girls tend to suffer more as school closures disrupt children’s education and make it harder for girls to return to learning, the researchers said. Additionally, jobs and household chores typically done by women expose them to dangerous temperatures and increase the risk they will suffer heat-related illnesses, the analysis found.
Improving ventilation, planting trees and painting schools lighter colours can help reduce
temperatures in classrooms and keep schools open, said Kiswendsida Guigma, a climate scientist at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre in Burkina Faso. Adapting the school calendar and class schedules can also help avoid severe disruptions to education, he added.
A tale of two women: What climate vulnerability actually looks like
Persistent gender roles – as well as the need to care for children and a lack of other options to avoid exposure to excruciating heat – means that in South Sudan, which has high levels of poverty, today’s frequent heatwaves hit women harder, deepening the divide between genders, said Friederike Otto, WWA’s lead and a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London.
She said the burning of fossil fuels has worsened extreme weather such that the people who are already struggling under unequal conditions experience the most harm. Globally women are more likely to “die during extreme weather events”, as well as experience food shortages and violence after them, she added.
The solution is to reduce these inequalities and cut planet-heating emissions from using fossil fuels, she said.
Miscarriages and stillbirths
The study, carried out by 17 researchers and scientists from universities and meteorological agencies in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Uganda, the US, the UK and elsewhere, found that the seven-day maximum heat in the South Sudan region this year would have been “extremely unlikely” if the world had not warmed by roughly 1.3 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial times. A similar week-long heat event would have been around 4C cooler without global warming of 1.3C, they added.
The researchers also found that the intensifying heatwaves increased the chance of miscarriage and stillbirths, making pregnancy and childbirth even more dangerous in South Sudan, which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, with 1,223 women dying for every 100,000 births.
Emmanuel Raju, one the study’s authors from the University of Copenhagen, said women and girls continue to bear disproportionate climate change impacts globally as a result of existing social inequities.
In the Global South, this “vicious cycle” often places an ongoing debt burden on women and leads to increased responsibilities and hardships such as care-giving, reduced work – particularly in the informal sector – and walking longer distances for water.
Trump’s aid cuts make Malawians more vulnerable to climate change
Intense heatwaves with temperatures as high as 40C are no longer rare events in South Sudan because of climate change, the researchers found. In today’s climate, with around 1.3C of human-caused global warming, similar extreme heat events in February can be expected about once a decade, they added.
Unless countries rapidly move away from fossil fuels, such heatwaves are expected to occur every year once warming reaches 2.6C as expected by 2100, they warned.
Sarah Kew, a WWA researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, said dangerous 40C-plus heatwaves are becoming the new normal in South Sudan.
“Once rare, these episodes of high temperatures are occurring every two years,” she said, posing huge challenges for people in South Sudan and particularly women. “Without a rapid transition to a world without fossil fuels, heatwaves will continue to get even more dangerous.”
The post Women bear brunt of South Sudan’s heatwave made worse by climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.
Women bear brunt of South Sudan’s heatwave made worse by climate change
The case shows that climate change is a fundamental human rights violation—and the victory of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, could open the door for similar lawsuits globally.
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Greenpeace Netherlands campaigner Eefje de Kroon.
A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Climate Change
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.
ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.
Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.
“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”
The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]
ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]
Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.
“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”
Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.
-ENDS-
Images available in Greenpeace Media Library
Notes:
[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.
[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee
[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.
[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
The Trump administration’s relentless rollback of public health and environmental protections has allowed widespread toxic exposures to flourish, warn experts who helped implement safeguards now under assault.
In a new report that outlines a dozen high-risk pollutants given new life thanks to weakened, delayed or rescinded regulations, the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group of hundreds of former Environmental Protection Agency staff, warns that the EPA under President Donald Trump has abandoned the agency’s core mission of protecting people and the environment from preventable toxic exposures.
Former EPA Staff Detail Expanding Pollution Risks Under Trump
A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
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