Environmental change does not produce the same forms of mobility across West Africa. It affects livelihoods, access to resources and people’s ability to stay, move, circulate or return. Drawing on the IOM–UN Migration report, published in 2021, Environmental Migration, Disaster Displacement and Planned Relocation in West Africa, this article shifts the focus away from identifying “climate migrants” and towards understanding how climate change gradually reshapes the range of choices available to people. This perspective also highlights the role of gender, inequality and public policy in shaping mobility trajectories across the region.
Climate change does not make everyone move in the same way
The expression “climate migration” can create the impression that environmental change produces an almost automatic chain of events: drought occurs, harvests decline and people leave. The reality across West Africa is considerably more complex. As documented in the International Organization for Migration (IOM) report, Environmental Migration, Disaster Displacement and Planned Relocation in West Africa, the region has a long history of mobility associated with environmental conditions, while intra-regional movement remains a defining feature of its migration systems. Mobility is therefore not a new phenomenon created by climate change. It has long been a way of accessing employment and markets, diversifying livelihoods, responding to seasonal conditions and maintaining social and economic ties between places.
This distinction matters because environmental change does not necessarily create entirely new forms of mobility. Rather, it can alter the conditions under which existing forms of mobility become possible, necessary or increasingly difficult. When rainfall becomes less predictable, pasture deteriorates, fisheries decline or coastal erosion progressively affects inhabited areas, the immediate response is not necessarily permanent departure. Households may adjust agricultural calendars, diversify their livelihoods, send one member to seek temporary employment elsewhere, move livestock or rely more heavily on remittances from relatives living in towns and cities. In these circumstances, mobility becomes one strategy among several for managing environmental pressures.
The challenge arises when these options progressively become less accessible. Climate change does not only increase pressures to move; it can also make it harder for people to remain in conditions that are safe, viable and economically sustainable. This is consistent with the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), particularly Chapter 9 of its Sixth Assessment Report on Africa: migration responses to climate hazards are strongly shaped by economic, social, political and demographic conditions. The same drought, flood or rise in temperature can therefore produce very different mobility outcomes in different places.
The relationship can even be paradoxical. Deteriorating livelihoods may increase the need to move while simultaneously reducing people’s capacity to do so. A household that loses a harvest or part of its livestock has fewer resources to pay for transport, secure accommodation elsewhere or cope with a period without income. Those most exposed to environmental stress are therefore not necessarily those who travel the furthest. Some may stay because they want to; others because they have no realistic alternative. The distinction between voluntary mobility and constrained immobility can consequently be more revealing than a simple distinction between migrants and non-migrants.
The IOM report also points to an important evidence gap. Available data are generally stronger for internal displacement than for cross-border movements associated with disasters, which are considerably more difficult to document. This challenge is particularly relevant in West Africa, where cross-border mobility has long been part of regional economic and social life, and where administrative borders do not always correspond to the spaces within which people work, trade, maintain family ties and move. The report therefore underlines the importance of regional institutions, including the African Union and ECOWAS, in developing more coherent approaches to environmental migration, disaster displacement and planned relocation.
Migration can support adaptation, but not everyone can use it that way
This distinction also calls for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between mobility and adaptation. It would be misleading to portray every form of migration associated with environmental change as a loss, or as evidence that people have failed to adapt. In many circumstances, temporary migration or movement to another area can enable households to maintain income, diversify livelihoods and reduce exposure to environmental risks. The IPCC recognises migration as a potentially important adaptation strategy in Africa, particularly where people have the resources, information and agency needed to move. Whether migration produces positive outcomes depends therefore to a significant extent on the rights, resources and choices available to those who move.
This helps explain the continuing importance of seasonal and circular mobility in West Africa. In economies that remain heavily dependent on agriculture, livestock and natural resources, mobility can help distribute risks across time and space. One household member may work temporarily elsewhere, send income home and return when agricultural or economic conditions improve. Mobility can therefore be a way of maintaining a relationship with a place rather than severing ties with it.
The World Bank’s work on climate migration in West Africa nevertheless points to the scale of the transformation that may lie ahead. Under a scenario of insufficient climate and development action, West Africa could see as many as 32 million internal climate migrants by 2050. This figure should not be read as a deterministic projection of people being “forced out” of their territories. Rather, it illustrates the potential scale of internal mobility if development and adaptation policies fail to address the factors that influence people’s decisions to move.
This distinction has important implications for public policy. The question should not simply be how to prevent people from migrating. It should also be how to ensure that mobility remains a viable option rather than becoming a response imposed by the exhaustion of all other possibilities. Migration undertaken early, with adequate resources and a meaningful degree of choice, does not have the same implications as displacement following the destruction of a home, the loss of livestock or the depletion of household assets. In the first case, mobility may contribute to adaptation; in the second, movement may occur only after adaptive capacity has already been severely weakened.
This is why it is necessary to look at what happens before people move. Who has the financial resources to undertake a journey? Who has access to information about employment opportunities elsewhere? Who can rely on relatives or social networks in another town, region or country? Who can temporarily leave children or other dependants behind? Who can cross a border without major administrative or legal obstacles? And, conversely, who has none of these options?
These questions reveal a fundamental dimension of climate mobility: the effects of climate change on human mobility are also effects on inequality.
Women do not have the same options
A gender perspective helps explain why the same environmental pressure can produce very different mobility trajectories within the same community. Women and men do not necessarily have equal access to land, income, credit, information, transport or decision-making. Nor do they necessarily carry the same care and household responsibilities. Mobility is therefore not simply an individual response to an environmental shock; it is shaped by the social relations and inequalities that determine what people can realistically do.
The IPCC notes, for example, that the migration of men from rural areas can increase the workload carried by women within households and agricultural activities. It also highlights the fact that poorer households often have fewer resources with which to migrate, even when they are highly exposed to climate impacts. Mobility therefore does more than redistribute people geographically. It can also redistribute responsibilities, labour and resources within households.
This is particularly important when considering those who remain. A woman may stay in her community because she wants to, but she may also remain because she is responsible for children, older relatives or other household members. She may stay because she lacks the financial resources needed to move, or because her access to land and income depends on family relationships that constrain her economic independence. Conversely, her departure may be prompted not by a sudden disaster, but by a gradual deterioration in livelihood conditions.
The UN Women policy brief on ensuring safe and regular migration for women and girls in the context of climate change emphasises that gender shapes both decisions to migrate and people’s experiences throughout the migration process. It also calls for better data collection and analysis so that migration policies can respond more effectively to the specific needs and vulnerabilities of women and girls.
This perspective also challenges the increasingly convenient category of the “climate migrant”. The term can suggest that people’s trajectories are primarily determined by an environmental shock, when in reality they are also shaped by social position, resources, institutions and individual and household agency. Two people exposed to the same climate risk may therefore make entirely different decisions. One may move temporarily because they have an income and social networks elsewhere; another may stay because they cannot afford to leave. The environmental risk may be the same, but the choices available to each person are not.
The same applies to return. Returning does not necessarily mean that environmental conditions have improved. People may return because living costs at the destination have become unsustainable, because employment opportunities have disappeared, because of family obligations or because of continued attachment to their place of origin. Migration trajectories can therefore involve temporary departures, returns, further movements and periods of immobility. Treating mobility as a one-way journey from a “vulnerable” territory to a “safe” one oversimplifies the realities people experience.
Anticipating displacement rather than simply responding to it
This understanding of mobility inevitably raises questions about public policy. The IOM report devotes significant attention to disaster displacement and planned relocation, including in areas affected by coastal erosion. It shows that the challenge is not only to assist people after displacement has occurred, but also to consider how governments can anticipate environmental and territorial changes that may make certain areas increasingly difficult to inhabit.
Planned relocation illustrates this challenge particularly clearly. It can become a necessary response when living conditions in a particular location are no longer sustainable. But relocating a population is not simply a matter of providing new housing. A fishing community moved away from its fishing grounds does not automatically recover its livelihoods. An agricultural household relocated to land with insecure tenure does not necessarily regain its economic security. A woman who loses access to her social support networks may experience greater insecurity even if her physical housing conditions improve.
The question, therefore, is not simply where displaced populations should be resettled, but how the economic, social and cultural conditions that sustained life in the original location can be restored or recreated. This is where migration policy, climate adaptation, rural development, land governance and spatial planning need to intersect. Policies that address these dimensions separately risk addressing only part of the problem.
The scale of internal displacement already demonstrates why anticipation matters. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), Global Report on Internal Displacement 2025, internal displacement linked to conflict and disasters has reached unprecedented levels globally, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for a substantial share. These figures should not be conflated with “climate migrants”: displacement associated with conflict, violence and disasters involves different drivers and dynamics. They nevertheless illustrate the scale of internal displacement that governments and local authorities are already expected to manage.
The priority should therefore not simply be to manage displacement once it has become unavoidable, but to sustain people’s capacity to adapt and make decisions for as long as possible. This means investing in livelihoods, secure access to land, infrastructure, early warning systems, social protection, essential services and economic diversification. It also means recognising that some forms of mobility may become necessary and ensuring that people can move safely, with their rights protected and through regular channels wherever possible.
This approach is particularly relevant in West Africa because regional mobility is longstanding and already functions as an economic and social resource. The IOM report emphasises the importance of taking this history of mobility into account rather than treating every movement as an anomaly produced by climate change. The role of ECOWAS and the African Union is therefore important in connecting migration governance with climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction and territorial development. ECOWAS itself recognises the importance of free movement of people within the sub-region and maintains a dedicated Directorate for Free Movement of Persons and Migration.
Preserving the ability to choose
The climate–mobility question in West Africa should ultimately not be framed solely in terms of predicting departures. Projections are useful, but they cannot tell us by themselves what it means to move, remain or return. Nor can they tell us who has the resources needed to turn environmental pressure into a mobility strategy and who, instead, becomes trapped in place because those resources are lacking.
The IOM report, Environmental Migration, Disaster Displacement and Planned Relocation in West Africa, provides an important basis for moving beyond this deterministic reading. By bringing together environmental migration, disaster displacement, environmental degradation, disasters and planned relocation, it shows why environmental mobility needs to be understood in relation to the territories in which it occurs and the social conditions that shape people’s decisions. The IPCC reaches a complementary conclusion: migration can be an adaptation strategy, but its outcomes depend heavily on the degree of agency available to those who move.
This may be one of the central challenges for the years ahead. The issue is not simply how many people will move as environmental conditions change, but under what circumstances they will do so. Anticipated and relatively voluntary mobility is not the same as displacement following the sudden loss of a home or livelihood. Temporary migration is not necessarily exile. Immobility is not necessarily stability. And return does not necessarily mean that the conditions that prompted departure have disappeared.
These distinctions matter because they determine how public policy should respond. If the objective is to reduce the risks associated with climate change, policies need to preserve people’s ability to diversify their livelihoods, access resources, move when necessary and remain when remaining is still viable. They must also recognise that this capacity is unevenly distributed, and that gender relations, income, land access, social networks and institutional arrangements all shape the range of choices available to different people.
Climate change is therefore transforming not only territories, but also the conditions within which people make decisions about their lives. Where those choices remain sufficiently broad, mobility can continue to be one strategy among several. Where they progressively narrow, moving can become an obligation and staying an impossibility. The central question may therefore no longer be simply who will move, but who will still be able to choose whether to move, remain or return?
This is where climate and migration policies can move from a reactive approach towards genuine anticipation: not by seeking to prevent mobility, but by ensuring that environmental change does not progressively erode people’s ability to determine their own trajectories.
Baltazar ATANGANA
Expert in gender, social inclusion and development
