The objective of this scoping review is to map out what has been published in the scientific literature on the relationship between climate change-related events and how these overlap with associated changes in resource availability, transactional sex and HIV incidence and prevalence, within fishing communities in the Lake Victoria basin. This objective is informed by the fact that climate change and the associated natural resource strains in the Lake Victoria region have exacerbated existing inequities within fishing communities. Vulnerable populations, especially women, engage in strategies such as transactional sex to cope with the uncertainty of natural resource-dependent livelihoods. This practice greatly increases women’s risk of contracting HIV in this region, with prevalence rates four to five times the national averages. This scoping review will thus show how the existing empirical literature reports on climate change, transformation in natural resources and livelihoods, and transactional sex and HIV in the Lake Victoria region.

Studies that meet the following inclusion criteria will be included: align with at least two of the major concepts of interest, including climate change, transactional sex, HIV/AIDS, Lake Victoria Basin and/or empirical studies; are published in English and after 2012; and focus on the Lake Victoria basin. The scoping review will be guided by the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis: Scoping Reviews, supported by the standard principles of Arksey and O’Malley. The specific search strategies to be implemented were developed with guidance from an experienced research librarian to align with the inclusion criteria. The search will be conducted in relevant global databases, with two reviewers screening the results and extracting relevant data points. Finally, results will be reported using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews flow diagram, and summarised in figures, tables and text.

The scoping review is designed to comprehensively scope the existing literature and document the coverage of linkages between transactional sex, HIV/AIDS and sustainable livelihoods in the context of climate change with a view to informing health systems responses to human health specific to the HIV epidemic.

The proposed scoping review is registered with the Open Science Foundation (OSF), registration number:https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/9DTW4.