Abstract
Climate change has attracted the attention of all stakeholders, ranging from individuals in the household through to global organisations in the international community. As an inevitable phenomenon at the moment, adaptation is the key response to minimising the unfavourable effects of climate change. While there are several adaptation strategies, rural areas mostly use migration as an ultimate and most reliable option. Rural migration in Ghana is mostly from the north to the south. This paper examines the factors that influence individuals and households’ decision to use migration as an adaptation strategy to climate change effects in North-western Ghana. Data was collected using household questionnaire in four communities and analysed using statistical package for social science, version 20.0. The study established that although there are other reasons for migration, it is used essentially as an adaptation strategy to the effects of climate change on livelihood. The study concludes that the debate on climate change and migration should no longer be whether climate change causes human migration but how the effects of climate change influence migrants’ resolve to migrate as an adaptation strategy. Such an analysis allows policy makers to find practical adaptive capacity measures that can offset the challenges at the original homes of migrants.
Highlights
Climate change and its ramifications are commonly known from the household level through to the international community
Rural communities continue to rely on rain fed agriculture as the main source of livelihood which is vulnerable to climate change
In response to the impact of climate change, several strategies are often explored, and migration is one of such strategies used by rural folks
Summary
Climate change and its ramifications are commonly known from the household level through to the international community. Several reasons have been given for migration, including social, economic, ecological/environmental, political, disasters, and security/wars (see, for example, Barnett & Webber, 2010; Lilleør & Van den Broeck, 2011; Morton et al, 2008; Van Der Geest, 2011). With the insurgence of climate change discourse, human mobility has been stressed as a key adaptation strategy for those who are directly affected by climate change (Van Der Geest, 2004). While climate change is a global phenomenon, sub-Saharan Africa is most vulnerable to its effects (Conway & Schipper, 2011) It is severe in rural areas, where livelihood largely depends on rain-fed agriculture and natural resources (Van Der Geest, 2011). Vol 10, No 6; 2017 the remote areas of Botswana, drought was identified as the major challenge for the people (Maru et al, 2014), compelling them to seasonally migrate, as an adaptation strategy
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