Climate-Induced Migration and Regional Governance in Africa: A Qualitative Study of Policy Response in West Africa

Abstract

The study has considered the issue of climate induced migration within the context of the strength or weaknesses of its governance instruments within the West African sub-region. The fulcrum of the theoretical and qualitative evaluation is the extent to which current migration legislation and administrative protocols fit into modern definitions of climate driven migration as distinct from refugees and internally displaced persons, who acquired such status on the basis of violent conflicts and armed hostilities. The paper thus posits that migration being a strategy for populating a place should be treated with outmost care as everyone’s progenitors migrated from somewhere and none were planted like a tree in a particular location. It was also found that migration serves as a means of knowledge, skill and technology transfer; thus, implying that some of the world’s inventions came from migrants who applied their indigenous practices to better their lives and those of their hosts. Given the benefits, generality and sensitivity of this human geolocation phenomenon, the study found that it is incumbent on national governments of West African States to collaborate with the regional organizing body like ECOWAS to fashion out well detailed policy frameworks that protects and provide basic rights and privileges for persons defined as climate-induced migrants; while also providing punitive measures for institutions and person that would pursue discriminative agendas against migrants.