Implications of the background

Several areas have been examined as a background to this study including water and land resources and their availability and accessibility in SSA. It has been noted that both land and water are abundant in this region. The River Nile, the world’s longest river, and other major rivers such the Congo, the Zambezi and the Niger rivers are all in SSA. Moreover, Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest lake, is in SSA (Ashton, 2002; Mejia et al., 2012). Ashton (2002) reported that around 53% of African (SSA) land is water abundant. Despite the availability of water, its distribution and accessibility have become a noticeable issue. Africa is the second driest continent in the world (ADF VII, 2010), and the Sahara, the world’s largest and hottest desert, and the Kalahari Desert are found in SSA. Many parts this region are classified as being dry environments and these areas experience water scarcity in the form of aridity, desertification, drought and/or water shortages (Santos Pereira et al., 2009). SSA member countries are varied in the amount of water resources available to them. More than a dozen countries in this region are in water stress situations and eleven more are predicted to join this list by the year 2025 (Mejia et al., 2012; UN, 2008).

The amount of arable land in SSA is estimated to be around 1.03 billion unevenly distributed hectares, 12.8% of which is currently cultivated (Jelle, 2009; Nachtergaele et al., 2011). The IPCC (2007) has predicted that approximately 75 million ha of SSA’s arable land may be lost by the year 2080. SSA has been experiencing warming temperatures as well as fluctuating rainfall (intensity–duration–frequency) in terms of time and space. Agriculture in SSA appears to be highly dependent on rainfall and recorded the slowest growth in irrigated agriculture in the world; around 3.7% of the agriculture is under irrigation compared to 41% in southern Asia (Turral et al., 2011). These factors result in poor agricultural production and a lack in water and food security.

Finally, agriculture is considered to be the main employment activity in SSA rural communities in particular. The agricultural sector’s poor performance appears to have caused a lack of employment opportunities among rural communities. Agriculture’s dependence on rainfall has caused subsistence agriculture to fail to deliver its major purpose

71 of feeding households and providing employment. These issues may have impacted on rural- urban migration in SSA and this subject is the main aim of this study. This study’s literature review attempts to critically asses the recent research related to the climate change issues such as rainfall and temperature changes, and examines their impact on water and food availability; and consequently the in turn impact on the movement of people in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This study aims to investigate climate change and its impact on the Sub-Saharan Africa region. Essentially, the study will:

 Analyse the data of two climate change factors, namely rainfall and temperature as well as non-climate related elements such as population and human migration;

 Explore, analyse and thus identify the nature of the relationship between climate change variables and human migration in SSA and

 Examine the push and pull factors of rural-urban migration in SSA.

The next chapter section presents the literature review and is followed by chapter 3 which presents the methodology used in this study to achieve the main aims and objectives of the thesis. The results and analysis with discussion are presented in chapter 4. Chapter 5 discusses the results and findings in terms of the literature reviewed. Finally chapter 6 presents the conclusions of the thesis. Implications and limitations are included in the final chapter. The references and appendix are presented following the conclusion chapter.

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2.2 Literature review

In this chapter section, the literature available in the area of climate change, population growth and people movement are discussed. The section gives special attention to the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa and summarizes research work available around climate change and its impact on rainfall, temperature and population movements in SSA. In the final parts of this section, implications of the literature are presented.

2.2.1 Introduction

While the earlier sections provided much about the statistics and the general nature of climatic effects around the world more generally, specifically, it appeared there has been relatively little research in the area of human migrations in SSA within and internationally, or regarding the influence of climate change related factors on Sub-Saharan Africa’s rural- urban migration patterns over time (Annez and Buckley, 2009; De Brauw et al., 2014; Martin et al., 1993; Vandererf and Heering, 1996). The little that exists mainly focus on climate change, global warming, population growth with a few concerning migrations in SSA (Barrios et al., 2006; Bongaarts and Casterline, 2013; Caldwell and Caldwell, 1990; Calzadilla et al., 2013, 2011; De Brauw et al., 2014).

Scientific research on climate change dates back to the mid-19th century. Most studies have

focused on the broader impacts of climate change at a global level and in the long term (Farmer, 2015; Saikia, 2009). The literature review therefore firstly focuses upon some research about the impact of climate change on rural and urban migration that have been done specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa. Then the research that have been done around the world concerning the impact of climate change on rural and urban migration in other parts of the world are reviewed. This background and literature are together explored to develop a framework for this study.

In SSA, agriculture has been the main driver of the economy. As mentioned in the background, agriculture employs the majority of the work force in the region. Agriculture in SSA is mainly rain-fed and for subsistence, and production has always performed poorly compared to other developing countries. Poor agricultural production has been related to the adversity of the natural environment. The low population density, poor management, lack of technology and climate conditions may have exacerbated the poor performance of the

73 agricultural sector. In their study, Barrios et al., (2008), noted that even minor changes in climate may substantially impact developing countries hitting their agricultural production hard. In this section, the literature review relating to climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa, rainfall, humidity, temperature, urbanization and external migration are all presented. In the final section of this chapter, implications are drawn from the literature presented from past studies to identify the main research gaps; which dignify their influence and contribution to the main aims and objectives of this study.