Working Paper

Climate Change and Migration in West African Coastal Zones

Global trends in migration show a predominance of internal over external flows. The African continent is the world’s most vulnerable region to climate change due to its higher levels of exposure and its scarcer financial resources for adaptation. Therefore, climate change presents in Africa some peculiar challenges to livelihoods, and security. In this paper, we assess the climate-induced migration in African coastal zones, accounting for many different factors such as conflict, demography, social networks, economic opportunities, and geographical factors such as the terrain. We also provide a critical review of major strands of models of climate-induced migration, namely agent-based models, choice-centred models, gravity model, and household allocation models. The most used data in climate change analyses are also analyzed.