Finding the hotspots: A novel geo-spatial approach to identify areas in Ghana that are prone to internal migration

Abstract

West Africa is considered as one of the most vulnerable regions towards climate change. Rural agriculture-dependent households in West African countries face limited adaptive capacity, which makes it necessary to implement off-farm adaptation strategies such as temporary migration. Migration has emerged as an important adaptation strategy to climate change among farmers in northern Ghana during the dry season. However, climatic causes of migration cannot be isolated from the socio-economic factors that underlie this phenomenon. At present, only a few studies have examined the interplay between the environmental and socio-economic factors of migration in greater detail. Our research addresses this gap by examining the vulnerability to various interrelated external factors that influence migration decisions focusing on Ghana as a case study. The study proposes an innovative approach to identify regions with a high likelihood of internal migration. We integrated a multifactorial, expert-based, weighted overlay analysis into the vulnerability assessment. For this purpose, a wide range of spatial data were analyzed, including trend analysis of seasonal precipitation patterns and changes in NDVI values as indicators of environmental change and degradation. Furthermore, socio-economic factors were derived from the most recent census in Ghana to capture the complex nature of migration decisions.

The resulting spatial hotspot maps showed that the impact of external factors is high in communities in the northern regions and some coastal areas of Ghana, where at the same time adaptive capacity is low. These results are consistent with current internal net-migration rates and demonstrate that the developed approach, which emphasizes external spatial factors, can effectively identify areas with a high likelihood of internal migration.

Given the spatial variation in impacts, identifying areas where external factors push individuals toward migration can help policymakers and organizations addressing the underlying environmental, economic, and social factors that drive those decisions. Our study highlights the need for policies to strengthen adaptive capacity in communities affected by multiple adverse circumstances.