Mobility Patterns of Pastoralists under Changing Climate in the Semi-Arid Zone of Ghana: A Case Study of the Wa East District in the Upper West Region

Abstract

Climate change is increasingly noted as one of the critical challenges to pastoral production systems in arid and semi-arid lands, particularly smallholder farming systems, which are recognized as most vulnerable due to their high dependence on climate conditions and their limited adaptive capacity. For ages, the pastoral system in Wa East District has altered and evolved to adapt to shifting environmental circumstances. This study examined the effects of climate change on mobility patterns of pastoralists in semi-arid northwestern Ghana. The study specifically focused on patterns and trends in climate change and mobile pastoral systems, drivers of change, their effects on land use and cover, and explored the adaptation strategies employed to deal with the effects of climate change and pastoralism on land use and land cover. The study examined resource access and control through the perspective of political ecology and pastoral commons theories, with implications for pastoralism, changes in land use and cover, and climate change. Going by pragmatism as a philosophical underpinning, a mixed research approach, specifically, the concurrent strategy involving household questionnaire survey, focus group discussions and key informant interviews was employed in collecting primary data from 387 sampled smallholder farmers from six communities in the Wa East District. Landsat images, rainfall, and temperature data were sourced using geospatial and meteorological methodologies for analyzing land use and land cover change, as well as climate change trends and patterns. The findings reveal that Wa East District has witnessed severe climate change over the past four decades, which has caused drastic changes in environmental and resource conditions. In response to changes in land use and cover caused by climate change and nomadic pastoralism in the area, smallholder farmers have devised a variety of coping methods. Respondents' adoption of these strategies is heavily influenced by a variety of social, economic, and demographic factors such Asvi gender, age, household size, length of stay, access to land, livestock ownership, and external support, as well as their perception of climate change using weather parameters such as perceived changes in rainfall, temperature, drought, and seasonal variations. The study has recommended that local adaptation strategies and knowledge of climate change should be integrated and mainstreamed into scientific practice at national, local and sectoral levels such as disaster risk reduction, and livestock and agriculture for sustainable pastoralism practices.