Losses and damages to social cohesion: Social and material impacts linked to climate-related mobility in West Africa and the Sahel

Losses and damages associated with the adverse effects of climate change are increasingly widespread and severe according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet many aspects of losses and damages remain under researched and are not well understood. This article contributes new knowledge on climate-related losses to social cohesion in areas affected by poverty, forced mobility and insecurity, where social cohesion has increasingly been a focus for donor and humanitarian actors. The article illuminates social losses, subsequent socio-emotional and material impacts, and potential avenues to address losses. The results are based on survey data in northern Ghana (n = 304) and western Niger (n = 254) as well as in-depth interviews and focus group discussions in Ghana. We find widespread, but unexpected changes in social cohesion: losses to social cohesion were prevalent in relatively stable areas experiencing high poverty and out-migration in Ghana, while in more fragile contexts in Niger, mostly displaced respondents reported widespread gains in social cohesion. This runs counter to prevailing approaches to social cohesion in humanitarian and development fields, which typically link weak cohesion to fragility, conflict and displacement. Respondents in both contexts also reported secondary losses to socio-emotional and material well-being. These impacts were linked to social cohesion losses and often described as irreparable. However, respondents indicated some avenues to address losses and improve well-being, including forms of both material and social support, e.g. financial support, access to infrastructure and efforts to increase belonging. These grounded empirical insights indicate that losses to social cohesion are likely intensifying in vulnerable settings, undermining the social and material conditions for resilience.

Key policy insights

Social cohesion is critical to resilience in marginal settings; humanitarian and development actors should consider cohesion in climate and development support, not only humanitarian responses to conflict and displacement.

Social cohesion can be supported through diverse social and material assistance, offering many pathways for support and integration into existing programming.

Mechanisms generating cohesion can be highly localized. Policy and programming should support localized action for relevant interventions, though with attention to vulnerable groups, who may be marginalized through existing social relations.

Understandings of cohesion in diverse Global South settings is limited; key institutions and stakeholders should further develop a knowledge base to enable relevant engagement.