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Abstract

Climate variability is a common phenomenon experienced world-wide. These impacts are more perceptible in sub-Saharan Africa. In Burkina Faso, a landlocked country in Western Africa, about 80% of the population depend on their own crops for living. As a result, the Burkinabè population has adopted a variety of adaptation strategies, including migration with the goal of finding alternative best conditions of life elsewhere. The current thesis determines the relationship between climate change, food insecurity and migration for the first time in the Nouna Health and Demographic Surveillance System which covers about 100,000 inhabitants in rural Burkina Faso. My central hypothesis is that an increase in both climate variability and food insecurity leads to a rising level of migration in rural Burkina Faso. To characterize climate variability in the Nouna Health and Demographic Surveillance System area, I used weather data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Burkina Faso, and the Burkina National Meteorological Agency data, as well as De Longueville and Sivakumar indicators. In terms of analyses, I draw on quantitative methods most used in population health and epidemiology. Specifically, I proceeded in the following three steps. First, event history analysis methods were employed to compute rates and proportions of migration for the population in the Nouna Health and Demographic Surveillance System area in Burkina Faso. Second, Cox proportional-hazards models were used for counting data to identify the link between rainfall variation and emigration. Third, I used logistic regression models to determine the link between household food insecurity and emigration in the study area. I assessed heterogeneity in the relationship by socio-demographic factors. The study found that the Nouna Health and Demographic Surveillance System area is a very dynamic zone with regard to population movement with a general migration balance of -2.2 ‰ over the period of the study. The study villages showed different levels of migration by age. Women and the younger population (10-34years) were more likely to migrate compared to men 91 and other age groups. Internal migration, mainly between villages, occurred more often than international migration. The weather data showed that the study region is perceptible to climate variability, operationalized by the amount of rainfall, has manifested itself in a degradation of the quality of the rainy season. There are delays in the start and precocity in the end of the rainy season, with a higher probability of having pockets of drought during the period 1992-2016. The relationship between weather variability and emigration was statistically significant. Precisely, the maximum number of consecutive dry days, the cumulative quantity of rain of the previous year, the interannual variation of rainfall, the cumulative quantity of rainfall and a lag of 3-months early rainfall were significantly associated with emigration in the Nouna Health and Demographic Surveillance System area between 1992 and 2016. Food insecurity, operationalized by households’ crops failure, had a positive association with household members emigration. In terms of implications, a key policy relevance of the study lies in the demonstration that climate change contributes to emigration, whether seasonal or permanent emigration, in the context of rural Burkina Faso. Moreover, the current thesis proposes concrete strategies to mitigate the impacts of climate change, such as by making agriculture more climate resilient and retain populations. I suggest to corroborate the findings through a prospective cohort study designed to capture a wider range of non-climatic drivers of migration and appropriate confounding variables. Climate events may induce important demographic changes with considerable implications for the broader development of the region.