Desertification and Drought Related Migrations in the Sahel – the Cases of Mali and Burkina Faso Nakia Peasron and Camille Niaufre
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The State of Environmental Migration 2013 DESERTIFICATION AND DROUGHT RELATED MIGRATIONS IN THE SAHEL – THE CASES OF MALI AND BURKINA FASO NAKIA PEASRON AND CAMILLE NIAUFRE INTRODUCTION This paper considers how mobility patterns, al- ready part of a traditional survival strategy in this Migration on the African continent occurs mainly climatically adverse region, are affected by recur- internally within countries as well as subregion- ring droughts and ongoing desertification. The ally across borders, with West Africa representing first section describes the climatic, environmental per cent of all regional movements (Black et.al, and population conditions in the Sahel region, and ). Farmers have historically moved mainly briefly shows how closely their impact on migra- between neighboring countries due to “artificial tion is related to food security issues. Two succes- boundaries demarcating socially homogeneous sive case studies of migration patterns in Mali and units into separate states” (Adepoju :; Burkina Faso are here presented, including data qtd. Ammassari, Black, ). Both Malian and collected from Pearson’s field study in Burkina Burkinabé farmers that straddle agricultural and Faso in . The final section summarizes existing political borders have long employed a substan- policies related to migration and environmental is- tial part of their household labor force to work sues and provides some recommendations. on secondary cocoa and coffee fields in the Ivory Coast during the Sahelian dry season (De Haas et.al, ; Konseiga, ). 1. ENVIRONMENTAL While having long engaged in migration as a THREATS AND MIGRATION livelihood diversification strategy against the frag- ile Soudano-Sahelian climate, low-income and landlocked Mali and Burkina Faso have found it .. Variability of Sahel difficult to liberate their populations from the de- rain conditions bilitating episodes of recurrent droughts and er- ratic rainfalls that have plagued the Sahel for the Normal Climate Variability last half-century. Since the - droughts, both Situated in the Western Sahel, between the Sahara countries have experienced increased north-south Desert to the north and coastal rainforests to the internal migration, as farmers and herders escape south, Burkina Faso and Mali are intertropical the descending “sahelization” of the countries’ countries marked by a Sudano-Sahelian climate, northern regions (Albergel, Valentin, ). and are prone to strong geographic variation in That the two neighbors rely on rain-fed agricul- annual rainfall as presented in the table below: ture for sorghum and millet staples as well as for cotton exports, makes their economies and food Table 1. Annual rainfall in Mali and Burkina Faso security highly vulnerable to changes in tempera- Regions Mali Burkina Faso ture and rainfall. In light of the Sahelian food Annual rainfall in North 50 mm 350 mm crisis following a major drought that has thus far Annual rainfall in the More than 1000 mm More than 1000 affected million people in the region, and a pro- South mm jected million people worldwide at risk of be- Source: Authors; Data Source: Hummel et al., 2000; World Bank Dashboard Overview ing displaced from desertification, land degrada- Burkina Faso, 2013 tion, drought (DLDD) (Almeria ), the need to Rain is mostly concentrated in - months of bring to the forefront the complex, yet widespread summer rainfall (May-September), when tem- impacts of slow-onset climate events, is crucial. peratures are high, thus accelerating evapora- tion rates. Intra-seasonal droughts are common, . They would return to cultivate cotton and grain at home since rainy seasons consist of many high intensity during the rainy season July-September. storms (OSS, ). IDDRI STUDY 09/2013 79 The State of Environmental Migration 2013 Figure 1. Annual rainfall variability in Sahel Time-series of Sahel (10°N–20°N, 18°W–20°E) regional rainfall (April–October) from 1920 to 2003 derived from gridding normalised station anomalies and then averaging using area weighting (adapted from Dai et al., 2004a). Positive values (shaded bars) indicate conditions wetter than the long-term mean and negative values (unfilled bars) indicate conditions drier than the long-term mean. The smooth black curve shows decadal variations. [WGI Figure 3.37] Extracted from IPCC, 2008:80, fig. 5.2 Figure 2. Annual mean of daily mean temperatures in Western Africa Extracted from Hummel et al., 2000: 22 Increasing climate variability On the temperature side, the Intergovernmental UNEP () classifies the major drought events Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a warm- of - and - as part of an ongoing ing of Africa by .°C to .°C per decade, with drought period starting in the s, and inter- even higher temperatures expected in Sahelian, rupted occasionally by one-off seasons of Central and Southern Africa (IPCCC, ). In the adequate rainfall. But while precipitation rates Sahel, the rise of temperature could reach +. to have improved since , there have been longer +.°C between and . These predictions successions of dry years, and single humid years, are still uncertain, and their distribution unequal particularly , , and (Ali ). between Sahelian countries, but the potential for Furthermore, this increased humidity has not been amplified evaporation of surface water and penu- uniform across the Sahel. Rain indices show that ry of water resources would strongly impact food isohyets have increased in the eastern Sahel (from security, whether in agricultural, pastoral or fish- Chad to eastern Niger) in the period -, ing sectors. In Mali, the production of rice by con- while they remain low in the western Sahel (from Senegal to western Mali) (Ibid). Additionally, the . per cent of the rainwater in the Sahel is not absorbed timing of annual rain cycles is increasingly vari- by the land and runs off. able as precipitation may decrease only at the end . For instance, fish captures in the Malian Niger Delta of dry seasons rather than in the beginning (Ibid). went from , tons in an average year (as in ) to 80 STUDY 09/2013 IDDRI The State of Environmental Migration 2013 trolled submersion, organized mainly by the Of- Figure 3. Evolution of the Malian population by region fice du Niger in the Ségou, Mopti and San Region, is bound to disappear by if the IPCC predic- 12 tions of rain reduction are realized (UNFCCC Mali, Nothern regions ). 10 Southern regions .. Desertification and 8 land degradation 6 millions Arid West African soils inherently suffer from poor fertility, exhibiting limited water retention 4 capacity, limited nutrient value, and reduced depth for root extension (Lahmar, ). When 2 erosive crusts, or zipelle, develop, they block infil- tration, initiating a vicious cycle of desertification 0 Population 1976 Population 2009 (Valentin, Casenave, ). The chemical deple- tion of soils sparked by the human elements of deforestation, bush fires, and over-cultivation, all Similarly, Burkina Faso has one of the fastest help to reduce organic material through oxidation growing populations in Africa, with an annual in- and the leaching of unused nutrients (PAN-LCD, crease of more than per cent in - (UNEP, ). Such soils, having lost their physical and ). As in Mali, migrants move southward from chemical integrity, are more easily swept away in the populous Mossi plateau in northern and cen- the dust storms or violent rains that occur during tral Burkina, where naturally erosive soils are fur- the later part of the rainy season (World Bank ther degraded by longer dry seasons, driving farm- Dashboard Overview Burkina Faso, ). ers to the fertile East and West (PAN-LCD, ; According the UNCCD (), per cent of Brown, Crawford, ). But while rural regions Burkina Faso’s land is degraded, while per cent are emptying out in Mali, thereby posing a threat is at high risk of degradation, most of which in the to its primary sector that constitutes per cent of densely populated Central Plateau. Likewise, Mali the country’s GDP, studies have shown that rural has witnessed a strong degradation of the vegetal out-migration is beginning to stagnate in Burkina cover since the s, leaving only per cent of its Faso, while internal urban out-migration is on the total surface arable (UNFCCC Mali, ). increase (Beauchemin, ). These trends put a serious additional pres- .. Population Pressure sure on land resources and production. Sahelian farmers have had to expand their farmland de- Following the trajectory of Sub-Saharan Africa, spite declining soil fertility and increasing weath- the total Sahelian population has increased four- er vagaries. Researchers have linked the rate of fold since the s, growing at a . per cent rate rural population growth (.% in ) to the between and , and will likely double rate of increase of cultivated surfaces (.%) between now and (Ozer and al., ). (Cambrézy and Sangli, ). Ouedgraogo et. al’s In Mali, the total population grew from . mil- () study in Sissili province in southern Burki- lion in to more than . million today (UN na Faso found that the annual rate of conversion World Population Prospect, ). If this extreme- of forest land to cropland at . per cent has ly rapid rate is maintained, the Malian population increased simultaneously alongside population could reach million by and more than density from inhabitants/km in to million in . This population is increasingly hbts/km in , due in part to migration since concentrated in the cities, with the capital city of the s droughts. Bamako having already reached million inhabit- This phenomenon is also present in Mali where ants. Southern regions are the ones experiencing the FAO estimates a loss of forests of , ha/ the fastest growth, as shown in Figure . year. Here, it is mainly due to biomass energy . The primary sector employs over % of their active populations and represents % GDP in Burkina Faso and % GDP in Mali. This share is bound to be reduced as the rural regions are emptying out (see Fig. ). Food insecurity could be experienced in the coming years, , tons in a dry year (as in ), which represents a further triggering migrations, whether from northern to diminution by % (UNFCCC Mali, ) southern regions or towards foreign countries.