Climate Change and Migration Crisis in Africa

Abstract

The conventional narrative on the crisis of climate change and its links to migration sees the physical impacts of climate change—such as sea-level rise, drought, soil salinization, and floods—as driving massive human migration, increasing existing flows from the Global South to the Global North as people flee disasters and famine. Yet contradictory evidence demonstrates that the relationship between climate change and migration is not so simple. Africa is indeed the most vulnerable content to these impacts, but this extreme vulnerability arises from physical exposure and because of the interplay of numerous social, political, economic, and environmental factors. Moreover, migration dynamics related to the climate change crisis manifest in nonlinear, heterogeneous ways across subregions and countries. Thus, this chapter outlines the varying and multidimensional relationships between human mobility and climate change in Africa. It considers the threat of climate change to African settlement dynamics both presently and in the century to come, before providing an overview of climate change–migration dynamics and challenges throughout the continent.