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- Convenors:
-
Ada Adoley Allotey
(Environmental Protection Agency, Ghana)
Linda Musariri (University of Witwatersrand)
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- Chair:
-
Amisah Zenabu Bakuri
(Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
- Format:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Environment and Geography (x) Climate Change (y)
- Location:
- Hauptgebäude, Hörsaal XIa
- Sessions:
- Friday 2 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
This panel investigates Africans' interactions with the interface between climate change and migration, adaptation and mitigation strategies by both individuals and state actors, with a focus on planned and well-managed migration as a solution to a trapped population.
Long Abstract:
Floods, growing competition for natural resources, record hot spells, and extended or severe droughts are some of the effects of climate change. Such consequences may endanger people's livelihoods, and the usual response is for them to migrate if they have the required forms of capital, as migration is an expensive venture. Those who lack the needed capital to move might be trapped. Human mobility continues to be an important livelihood strategy motivated by the survival instinct to seek better opportunities, more so in the current and ongoing anthropogenic climate change. However, determining how much of this mobility, whether international or internal, is solely or partially due to climate change is challenging. Without a doubt, the difficulty in attributing human mobility to climate change within Africa, for instance, is due to significant data challenges, which are gradually improving. Equally, no connection was established between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on climate change and migration, even though climate change influences patterns of migration and displacement. Climate migration is both a present and future phenomenon, which is already a scare in the global north - so-called climate refugees. This panel invites papers that explore the interface of migration and climate change foregrounding, lived experiences of Africans within the African continent, adaptation and mitigation strategies by both individuals and state actors. Moreover, we intend to devote special attention to African countries that are considering planned and well-managed migration as a solution for their population who have been trapped as a result of climate change.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 2 June, 2023, -Alina Schürmann (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg) Justice Nana Inkoom (Institute for Geosciences and Geography) Christopher Conrad (Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg) Janina Kleemann (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)
Paper short abstract:
In West Africa, migration is a strategy to cope with adverse living conditions. The aim of this study is to analyze various environmental factors, combined with expert interviews, to identify regions that are least suitable for agriculture-dependent households and which may thus promote migration.
Paper long abstract:
In West Africa, migration has been a strategy to cope with adverse climatic conditions, poverty, and food insecurity for centuries. Environmental conditions, including the frequency of droughts and floods as well as land degradation, are known to influence human migration patterns. Within the MIGRAWARE project, this study aims to identify regions where several unfavorable factors could promote out-migration.
Multiple environmental data sources are being used in the study, including The Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation With Station Data (CHIRPS) to analyze historical precipitation patterns, and the MODIS Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) dataset to assess land degradation. Time series analyses using Mann-Kendall tests were performed for the period 2000-2021 to quantify temporal trends for the focus countries Burkina Faso, Ghana and Nigeria.
To fully understand the complexity of the migration patterns in our focus countries, the study is also incorporating data on other drivers of migration, such as armed conflict and population density. The interactions between these different drivers are being explored in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the migration patterns in the region. Additionally, expert interviews were conducted to weight the importance of various factors influencing migration decisions.
The results of this study will help formulate recommendations for stakeholders to better target climate change adaptation measures and the advancement of policies and solutions related to the food-climate-migration nexus in the region. This could include measures such as targeted food assistance programs, investments in infrastructure and services, and policies to promote sustainable land use.
Johannes Lueckenkoetter (TU Dortmund University, Germany) Katrin Gliemann (TU Dortmund - Spatial Planning) Philip Kruse (TU Dortmund University)
Paper short abstract:
The paper analyses census data on internal migration in West Africa and their complex relationships with climate change indicators. It then explores how translocal migration reduces households’ climate risks and has a stabilising effect on rural areas. This has implications for migration policies.
Paper long abstract:
Climate-induced migration is a hotly debated policy issue in West Africa – not least since the World Bank’s 2021 Groundswell Report on internal migration in West Africa. This paper aims to contribute to the debate in three ways: First, the paper presents the results of a statistical analysis on the relationship between bioclimatic indicators and short-term internal migration data taken from censuses across West Africa. It shows that, notwithstanding other push- and pull-factors, out-migration areas are usually characterized by climatic conditions less favourable for agriculture and/or by more pronounced climate change.
Second, the paper analyses internal migration in Sierra Leone in more detail. Besides rural-urban migration to the country’s major agglomerations, as common in most other countries, there is also evidence of circular and translocal migration patterns.
Third, a household survey conducted in a rural district of Sierra Leone sheds an even more differentiated light on the role of climate change for rural-urban migration. The survey revealed how households adopt a translocal livelihood strategy, where some household members earn a living in urban centres and economically contribute to the household that is still centred in the rural area. Such arrangements can reduce an agricultural household’s vulnerability to climate change and thus have a stabilising effect on rural areas. Conversely, the urban household members may become exposed to impacts of climate change like urban flash floods. The paper concludes with discussing how these complex migration patterns challenge existing assumptions on the climate-migration nexus and call for more differentiated migration policies.
Gideon Selorm Hosu-Porbley (University of Ghana)
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines priorities and strategies of community and state level structures regarding flooding of climate change hotpots where livelihoods in farming communities are affected. It also explains the effects of climate induced migration actions by stakeholders in the incident areas.
Paper long abstract:
Migration from and to climate change hotpots have been a feature of some key communities in northern Ghana, specifically the upper west region of Ghana, which has experienced flooding in recent times in some of its major communities in Nadowli-Kaleo District, Jirapa District, and the Lawra municipality. This has resulted in forced migration, mainly from rural - rural settings, disruptions of livelihoods at source regions and related effects of migration inflows at the destinations. The district and community structures have made some internal arrangements culminating in evacuations and forced migration, and other actions influenced by the tenets of the National Disaster Management Organization of Ghana. The interplay of these actions have implications for development programming and sustainable livelihoods in the climate change hotpots.
Rachel Keeton (ITC - University of Twente) Diana Reckien (University of Twente) Mumuni Abu (University of Ghana) Jared Owuor (Samuel Hall)
Paper short abstract:
This study compares perceptions of migration drivers between two rural communities in Ghana and Kenya. The key shared perceptions support generalized migration narratives, while the divergent perceptions reflect contextual specificities more appropriately addressed in local policies.
Paper long abstract:
The vast majority of research on climate-driven migration takes a top-down approach using quantitative methods to arrive at results. In practice, this leaves a gap where finer-grain qualitative methods based on empirical evidence could be used to contextualize and validate these results, as well as add nuance to the narratives that are produced around climate-driven migration. In this study, we aim to contribute a bottom-up analysis of migration drivers by comparing Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) from two rural communities: Lunbunga, Tolon District, Ghana, and Kathyaka, Makueni Conuty, Kenya. In both communities, observable environmental changes combined with a high dependence on subsistence agriculture have contributed to increasing net out-migration in recent decades. Based on analysis of 120 total FCMs (60 from each site), we identify the most prevalent shared perceptions across the two communities, as well as those where the responses diverge. Additionally, we examine the FCMs using an intersectional approach that takes into account different power axes within these communities (i.e. gender, age, and educational level).
The results of the analysis provide insight into the specificities of these communities and the complex ways in which perceptions of climate change relate to local contexts. We conclude that aggregated perceptions of climate change in these two communities on opposite sides of the African continent share a number of key concerns. Additionally, the specific areas of divergence should be appropriately considered at the local and regional level, and we make a number of recommendations for further research directions based on these results.
Baffoe Kingsley (University of Ghana) Theophilus Kwabena Abutima (University for Development Studies) Drumond Dzakuma (University of Ghana) Elorm Bayitse
Paper short abstract:
Migration of farmers from rural farming areas to practice market gardening in cities has received less research attention. Using mixed method approach, the study found that most participants were farmers at community of origin but practice gardening as a livelihood mitigation strategy in the city.
Paper long abstract:
Migration in general is a well-known area of research in all spheres of life but migration of farmers from rural farming communities to practice market gardening in cities is less known especially in Ghana and has received less research attention. Farmers abandon large farmlands, good soils and water sources to migrate to the cities to continue same pre-occupation. This study therefore explored the relationship between migration and market gardening in cities using Accra as a study focus.
The study adopted a concurrent mixed methods approach and migration systems theory and push-pull theory to uncover the causes of rural farmers migration to cities and why market gardening is chosen over other pre-occupations. In all, a total of 150 market gardeners were sampled for the survey and some key informants using probability and non-probability techniques.
The study found that, most participants were farming in their communities of origin prior to migrating to the city. However, market gardening is considered alternative livelihood mitigation strategy for the migrants. The migrants identified were not only Ghanaians but other foreign nationals from neighbouring countries. The study revealed that, chieftaincy disputes, low prices for produce, climate change and irrigation inputs inefficiencies informed migrants to move from rural communities to the cities. Migrant gardeners create hundreds of jobs for city dwellers in the value chain and also remit regularly to families left behind. Nonetheless, access to lands, high inputs cost, freshwater challenges were found to obstruct the sustenance of the industry in Ghana.
Valentina Acquafredda (Università di Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy)
Paper short abstract:
It presents the Ethiopian case of Bunobasa Baketo kebele, which is depopulating due to return of communities to highlands. Once a land of displacement because of environmental problems in surroundings, it is now a land of departure because of insecurity due to, but not limited to, climate change.
Paper long abstract:
The article presents the ethnographic case of Bunobasa Basketo kebele in Basketo special woreda in SNNPR of Ethiopia. This is one of the kebele affected by a not-new adaptation strategy, resettlement (2003-2007), to cope with land scarcity in the highlands and central areas and cyclical famine, which convinced and forced families to relocate. This was an inadequately response, planned by ERPDF government with a top-down approach.
Nowadays Bunobasa is depopulating, and communities are returning to the surrounding highlands because of worsening environmental conditions, but not exclusively. Delayed rains and rising temperatures are making survival increasingly difficult even in an area where the land is fertile.
Indeed, many hectares of land have been granted to wealthy Ethiopian investors who represent, amid criticism from the community, the only alternative of income for families, as well as a deterrent to the incursions of nomadic pastoralists from the South Omo Zone, who in a context of livestock shortages and lack of legality, due to civil war and local disorders, have intensified their assaults.
What is happening in Punobasa is paradigmatic because it demonstrates how the reasons for people's mobility should be attributed to climate-induced factors, even if they do not exhaust the complexity of the dynamics that are affecting the area.
While the government's reaction to the current situation has been to nominate Bunobasa for Safety Net, an emergency food program passed off as climate resilience, people are left with no choice to resist or leave, going back to where they came from.
Janet Munakamwe (Wits Mining Institute)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will examine the nexus amongst climate change, migration, and xenophobia. Methodologically, the paper adopts a qualitative approach involving desktop review (policy and strategy reviews), in-depth interviews and ethnography.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will examine the nexus amongst climate change, migration, and xenophobia. Methodologically, the paper adopts a qualitative approach involving desktop review (policy and strategy reviews), in-depth interviews and ethnography. South Africa is regarded as the economic hub of Africa such that citizens do not foresee themselves migrating anywhere at any time now and in the near future. However, the naturally occurring disasters and ecological crises are more likely to shift this inertia. The reality is that climate change is with us and inevitable. The key question would be considering pervasive xenophobia against fellow Africans, how will indigenous people in South Africa cope if they fall victim to the deleterious impacts and are forced to migrate out of their comfort zones?