The influence of the natural environment on migration in Burkina Faso
(2003)
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- Authors
- Supervisors
- Lambin, Eric
- Abstract
- The impact of environmental factors on spatial mobility is a recurrent theme in the literature on migration in Burkina Faso and in other Sahelian countries. Repeated droughts and low soil productivity have often been cited as major factors pushing people to leave their villages. The concept of environmental refugees is another illustration of the widespread belief that migration is strongly influenced by environmental conditions. Since rain-fed agriculture is the main source of livelihood in rural Burkina Faso, intuitively it makes sense that environmental factors will influence socio-economic conditions and may lead people to emigrate. The objective of this research is to investigate the impact of environmental conditions (e.g. rainfall conditions and land degradation) on migration in Burkina Faso. Three scales are considered to study the impact of environment conditions on migration: the province level (the first administrative level in Burkina Faso), the department level (the second one) and the individual level. Conclusions are compared to provide a complete picture. Chapters I and II cover the introduction and a description of the study area. The Chapter III analyses the factors that cause inter-provincial migrations in Burkina Faso (based on the Population Census Survey in 1985), focusing specifically on the role of environmental factors in driving large migration flows in ecologically marginal regions. It uses statistical methods for modeling migration data to assess the relative importance of socio-demographic and biophysical variables. The results demonstrate that, as expected, demographic and socio-economic characteristics of Provinces are associated with migration patterns, and that environmental variables are also significant. However, the contribution of environmental variables in the explanation of migration is slightly lower than for the socio-demographic variables. The results show that inter-provincial migrations in Burkina Faso are influenced by high literacy and economic activity rates at the origin and destination, a high proportion of men at the origin, a low proportion of men at the destination, as well as by unfavorable conditions concerning rainfall variability, land degradation and land availability at the origin, and favorable conditions at the destination for these variables. In Chapter IV, an analysis of the sensitivity of these results to the scale of analysis is added, by considering the analysis at the department level (based on the Population Census Survey in 1996). The Chapter V describes individual migratory pathways in the 1960-1999 period in Burkina Faso, based on two environmental typologies of origins and destinations: based on rainfall variations and land degradation. The study links data from a national longitudinal survey with fine resolution rainfall data and land degradation data. Results show that people leaving a rural area settle more often in a rural area with favorable environmental conditions than in an area with unfavorable conditions. A large proportion of the population living in rural areas affected by land degradation outmigrated before the age of 40. Migration decisions appear to be more influenced by a slow-acting process such as land degradation than by episodic events such as droughts. Environmental factors thus influence, but in different ways, both the process of decision-making leading to a migration and the selection of a destination once the decision has been made. Results suggest that environmental conditions interact with others factors to cause migrations. Unfavorable environmental conditions are unlikely to be the unique cause pushing people to migrate. The Chapter VI uses longitudinal multilevel data from a recent national longitudinal migration survey, a large-scale retrospective community survey and a long time-series of rainfall data. The focus is on the influence of agro-climatic factors on the risk of leaving the village, among both men and women. Discrete-time event history models are used to estimate the impact of rainfall (long-term conditions and short-term variations) on the risk of migration, in addition to the effects of individual and community variables. The distinction of migrations by destination and duration proves critical in measuring the relationship between rainfall conditions and the risk of moving. Results include the finding that short-term migrations are much more likely in the drought-prone regions, supporting the idea that temporary migration is a way to diversify income sources in a risky environment. Short-term rainfall deficits are linked to migration in more complex ways: they tend to increase the risk of long-term migrations to rural areas and decrease the risk of short-term moves to distant destinations among males. To conclude, the environmental conditions do influence migration but the distinction by gender, destination and duration is crucial. Thanks to the adequate use of the existing tools, the current study is one of the first to give an accurate and near-complete answer on the influence of the natural environment on migration for an entire country.
- Affiliations
Citations
Henry, S. (2003). The influence of the natural environment on migration in Burkina Faso. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/97998