Migration and environment in Ghana: a cross-district analysis of human mobility and vegetation dynamics

Abstract

Migration—environment linkages are at the centre of media attention because of public concern about climate change and a perceived “flooding” of migrants from less developed countries into more affluent parts of the world. In the past few years, a substantial body of conceptual literature about environmentally induced migration has evolved, but there is still a paucity of empirical work in this area. Moreover, the environmental causes of migration have been studied largely in isolation of the environmental consequences. In this paper we present an analysis of migration and vegetation dynamics for one country (Ghana) to assess four migration—environment linkages. On the one hand, we look at two environmental drivers of migration: environmental push and pull. On the other hand, we look at the environmental impact of migration on source and destination areas. Census data at the district level (N=110) are used to map domestic migration flows in Ghana, which are then related to vegetation dynamics retrieved from a remotely sensed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) dataset (1981— 2006). The analysis shows that at the national level, there are significant but weak correlations between migration and vegetation cover and trends therein. Districts with a migration deficit (more out-migration than in-migration) tend to be more sparsely vegetated and have experienced a more positive NDVI trend over the past quarter century than districts with a migration surplus. A disaggregation of data in three principle migration systems shows stronger correlations. Namely that north—south migration and cocoa frontier settlement have important environmental dimensions, but environmental factors do not seem to play a major role in migration to the capital, Accra. An important insight from this paper is that migration flows in Ghana can be explained partly by vegetation dynamics but are also strongly related to rural population densities. This is because access to natural resources is often more important than the scarcity or abundance of natural resources per se. This study further shows that satellite remote sensing can provide valuable input to analyses of migration—environment linkages.

Migrant farmers as information brokers: agroecosystem management in the transition zone of Ghana

“…Specifically, in the forest-savanna transition zone of Ghana, both Leach and Fairhead (2000) and Adjei-Nsiah et al (2004) illustrate the mechanisms by which migrant farmers in the region negatively affect forest cover, long-term soil fertility, and fallow management. However, this has been contested more recently, as little land-use change has been reported in this destination region, presumably due to a lack of land access for migrant farmers (van der Geest et al 2010).…”

“…In Ghana, within the period of 1995-2000, approximately 1.4 million people changed their district of residence (Ghana Statistical Service 2002). Various studies on migration in Ghana (e.g., Kasanga and Avis 1988, Nabila 1992, Tutu 1995, Anarfi et al 2003, Litchfild and Waddington 2003, Ackah and Medvedev 2010, van der Geest et al 2010) emphasize migration from the north to the central forest-savanna transition zone and coastal areas of the country as an important component of people's livelihood strategies. What is certain from empirical and theoretical research on migration, in all its varieties, is that environmental change is one of the many contributing factors, and environment-migration relationships are complex (Rocheleau et al 1996, Carr 2005, Jonsson 2010).…”

“…Although environmental recovery and sustainable land management practices in regions of migrant origin have been explored (Olsson et al 2005, van der Geest et al 2010, little work has examined rural to rural migration and the role of migrant farmers in land management of the destination region. Migrant farmers possess agricultural experience from their region of origin, and this may be of increasing importance as destination regions experience their own environmental change, for instance, shifts in rainfall patterns in the transition zone of Ghana (AdjeiNsiah et al 2010, Adjei-Nsiah andKermah 2012).…”

Informing migration policies: a data primer

“…Researchers are devising a numbers of ways to link multiple types of data in order to assess and anticipate environmental migration. In Ghana, Van der Geest et al (2010) link census data to vegetation data to examine the connections between internal migration and vegetation dynamics. Feng et al (2010) examine the connection between crop yields and migration by merging crop data with census data.…”

Impact of livelihood diversification of rural households on their ecological footprint in agro-pastoral areas of northern China

“…Taking the relationship between off-farm employment and ecosystem as an example, some researchers believe that laborers leaving the rural areas alleviates the pressures on land, and thereby contributes to the deforestation reduction, biodiversity conservation and local environmental protection (Rodríguez-Meza et al, 2004;Van der Geest et al, 2010;Wang et al, 2011). The experiences in some areas, especially in the remote mountainous areas of North America and some parts of Europe, showed that off-farm employment of rural laborers contributes to the forest transition and re-growth (Caraveli, 2000;Rudel et al, 2005;Gellrich and Zimmermann, 2007;Izquierdo et al, 2011;Li and Zhao, 2011).…”