Weather’s force: A worker on Linah and Godfrey Hapakas’ farm looks at clouds in Kaumba, Zambia (above). The Hapakas are part of a programme managed by the World Food Programme that facilitates the adoption of climate-smart agriculture. Zimbabweans (below) climb into a South African National Defence Force vehicle after they were arrested near the Beitbridge border post. Photos: Guillem Sartorio/AFP & Phill Magakoe/AFP
“There was a drought. We had no rainfall for a very long time and could not grow crops and we could not feed our families.”
These environmental factors spurred a Zimbabwean’s move to South Africa, as the migrant told researchers from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). But the severe drought of 2015-16, which caused food shortages in Zimbabwe, wasn’t the only reason for the move.
“Regardless of the drought, I would have moved to South Africa because there are no jobs back in Zimbabwe, and I wanted my kids to go to school.”
The reasons people leave their homes when faced by slow-onset environmental pressures, like drought, are complex and feature “an interplay of [environmental] push and [economic] pull factors”, making it difficult to show causality, the CSIR researchers note in their November 2020 study.
‘Kukimbia — to flee’
The Kukimbia (“to flee” in kiSwahili) research, funded by South Africa’s Water Research Commission, centred on environmental migrants, who the researchers describe as “forgotten refugees” affected by slow-onset and rapid-onset events in the Limpopo River Basin.
They investigated the effect of environmental displacement and migration in Southern Africa, particularly in South Africa and Mozambique. For South Africa, the focus was migration from other African countries across the Beitbridge border into Musina, linked to drought or the loss of ecosystem services.
The problem of climate-induced or environmental migration is recognised “as one of the foremost crises of our times”, the researchers said. Southern Africa is projected to continue to experience rising temperatures, often resulting in reduced rainfall and drought, “which renders communities more vulnerable and therefore increases the likelihood of further displacement and migration across the region”.
Drought a ‘creeping’ challenge
Drought is perceived as a “persistent and creeping challenge”, with 60% of the region vulnerable to its effects. “Recent drought episodes in Southern Africa, including the severe drought of 2015-16, have seen the displacement and migration of people across the region, although little is known about the extent of these human movements.”
On the basis of their Limpopo case study, it’s “impossible” to attribute migration into South Africa exclusively to environmental reasons. “Nonetheless, we reiterate the importance of studying such cases, even if they cannot be classified as ‘pure’ environmental migration.
“This is because of the increasing prominence of environmental stressors on people’s livelihoods linked to climate change, and particularly in countries that are also characterised by political instability and severely limited economic opportunities.”
Suspected undocumented Zimbabweans climb into a South African National Defence Force (SANDF) vehicle following their arrest after attempting to smuggle food and furniture into Zimbabwe from South Africa, near the Beitbridge border post, near Musina on October 1, 2020. (Photo by Phill Magakoe / AFP)
Overlapping reasons
It’s difficult to isolate climate change as a key driver for migration, whether cross-border or internal, said Aimee-Noel Mbiyozo, a senior research consultant in migration at the Institute for Security Studies.
“This is because people migrate for a basket of reasons, often overlapping. The overwhelming majority of migrants say they migrate for economic reasons — moving from rural to urban or across borders to more affluent countries with the aim of finding work, or better work.
“But we do know for certain that Africa and Southern Africa in particular are some of the fastest urbanising parts of the world already and that this is certainly exacerbated by climate factors. Africa is highly dependent on rainfed agriculture. As crop, fishing and livestock incomes become less reliable and populations increase, more people will flow into cities.”
Progress hampered
A report by Mboyizo last year that investigated all national level climate instruments found none address migration as an outcome or include plans for climate-linked migration. “Climate change and mobility are treated as distinct policy arenas in most places. We strongly advocate for them to come together. There is also incoherence across the levels of governments and between ministries.”
This is hampering climate change progress in many countries — that the effects are spread across so many areas of society and governance. “We also advocated for governments to look more at smaller secondary cities in their planning. Rather than seeing flows only to mega-cities, there are smaller cities that could use the population and economic growth with inflows and have more space — literally and figuratively — to absorb it creatively.”
Hotspots of risks
In its latest report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describes how climate change is projected to increase migration in Africa, especially internal and rural-to-urban migration.
It found that in Africa, most climate-related migration is currently within countries or between neighbouring countries, rather than to distant high-income countries. By 2050, 0.9 million to 1.5 million people in Southern Africa could be migrating internally or between neighbouring countries as a consequence of climate change’s harmful effect on water, crop productivity and sea level.
In 2018 and 2019, more than 2.6 million and 3.4 million weather-related displacements occurred in sub-Saharan Africa.
Migrants often move to informal settlements in urban areas located in low-lying coastal areas or alongside rivers, worsening their vulnerability.
Africa’s rapidly growing cities, the IPCC said, will be “hotspots of risks” from climate change and climate-induced in-migration, which could amplify pre-existing stresses related to poverty, informality, exclusion and governance.
Urbanisation ‘not a problem in itself’
“The IPCC confirms what we see and is correct,” Mboyizo said. “I do like to warn that urbanisation in and of itself is not a problem. Evidence from international research shows that doubling a city’s population increases per capita GDP between 3% and 8%.”
In the United States, 80% of the population is urban and 75% in the European Union, compared to 43% across Africa and 67% in South Africa, from 54% in 1994. “So there is economic and development opportunity in urbanising. But continentally, 70% of urban dwellers live in slum conditions.
“In this context, having more people moving into slums will increase all kinds of vulnerabilities. Many slums are in environmentally vulnerable areas like floodplains or are heavy in heat-conductive materials. These areas are fragile and unplanned growth will not have good outcomes.”
Although many urban planners are focused on climate adaptation and numerous mayoral offices have pulled climate planning into their offices, climate change is still not included in most planning instruments. “Many of the projections and plans do not account for climate-linked growth in cities. Enacting the Climate Change Act would have a big impact on this,” the Mbiyozo said.
Better planning
The challenge is multi-dimensional, said CSIR senior researchers Nikki Funke and Karen Nortje. “But two issues stand out from our research. The first relates to increasing the capacity of urban centres to plan adequately to accommodate growing populations, and the second relates to increasing the adaptive capacity of the so-called sending areas where migrants come from.”
Careful planning for key public service sectors such as housing, education, transport, water and sanitation and electricity is required. “Funding and adequate expansion of services requires increased revenue collection,” they said. “This, in turn, requires the need to urgently address South Africa’s record-high unemployment figures by creating meaningful and sustainable employment, particularly for semi- and low-skilled workers.”
The living conditions in the areas from which migrants move, the “sending areas”, for example rural areas in South Africa or neighbouring countries, must be improved. “The sending home of remittances — in the form of money, food, fertiliser, infrastructure — by migrants plays a big part in the upliftment of sending areas, especially if they are rural,” said the researchers.
More is needed in terms of successfully implemented development projects from the government, the private sector and civil society to enable people to make a better living in rural areas. “This is the case now more so than ever given the impact of a changing climate on activities such as subsistence or small-scale farming.”
Lack of reliable data
In their study, the CSIR researchers write how, until recently, the issue of climate-induced or environmental displacement and migration has tended to be overlooked. “However, the sheer assumed size of these human movements has now forced political leaders to pay attention. “
A major problem regarding the effect of migration in general, and specifically
environmental migration in the Limpopo case study area, is the lack of reliable data on how many international migrants reside in South Africa.
“Statistics South Africa estimated the number of foreign-born nationals living in South Africa to be 2.2 million in 2011, while the United Nations estimated the number to be 3.14 million in 2015 and four million in 2017.
Other sources, noticeably the media, they say, have put the number to be much higher, with this uncertainty causing “considerable confusion” about the number of international migrants residing in South Africa, and also making it impossible to ascertain their actual effect on urban areas and related services, as well as to plan for and address such impacts.
“Furthermore, such uncertainty fuels dangerous rumours and, in turn, results in the
aggravation of xenophobic sentiments, as witnessed in the recent renewed outbreaks of
xenophobia across South Africa. We therefore argue for the need for considerably more rigorous and robust research to try to determine migrants’ impacts — both positive and negative — on the South African economy and other services and systems within the country.”
Given that labour migration into South Africa is an age-old phenomenon, and given the continued attraction of South Africa as a destination by people from other African countries, a “securitised ‘keep out’ policy is likely to only have limited success”.
It is important, too, “to look at the positive aspects of international migration (even of low- and medium-skilled migrants), who often come into South Africa with an entrepreneurial spirit and willingness and eagerness to work, which opens up opportunities to contribute to the economy.
“At the same time, given the undisputed social, economic and political burden of hosting substantial numbers of foreign nationals, embracing migrants is not something the government should have to do on its own,” they write, describing how the government should try to look outside its borders for bilateral, regional and third-country or donor support to help shoulder the responsibility of hosting foreigners who have moved for environmental and other reasons.
[/membership]