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Paper short abstract:

This paper historicises current climate-related migration in Ghana’s northern savannah and southern forest zone. It finds that climate change is intensifying existing migration patterns shaped by colonial policies and prompting new climate-related migration patterns in both regions.

Paper long abstract:

The last few decades have witnessed rising global attention to the intricacies of climate change and human migration. Ghana is seriously affected by the effects of climate change because of its geographical location and weak adaptive capacity, with effects on migration already becoming evident. While climate-related mobility has, for centuries, been part of life in dry zones of Ghana, existing literature on migration in the context of climate change generally lacks a historical perspective. Consequently, there is little understanding of how current climate-related migration is rooted in historical antecedents. To help fill these gaps, this paper provides a historical analysis of climate change-related migration in Ghana. It analyses climate-related migration in both the northern Savannah zone and the forest zone in southern Ghana, which provides an important supplement to existing research which mainly focuses only on northern Ghana. The paper employs the Foresight (2011) framework on environmental change and migration as well as a political ecology perspective and draws on literature review, climate data, surveys of 802 households, and interviews with farmers. The paper demonstrates how climate change interacts with economic, social, political and demographic factors to shape migration flows in both the northern savannah and southern forest zone over time. The paper finds that while climate change has contributed to the intensification of existing migration patterns shaped by colonial policies, new patterns of climate-related migration have emerged in both regions. Based on the findings, we make recommendations for harnessing the benefits of climate-related migration for socio-economic development in Ghana.