Largely dependent on rain-fed agriculture, the West African populations could be severely impacted by climate change and variability. In this paper, we performed a literature review relating to perceptions of climate change and variability in West Africa, followed by an in-depth comparison between perceptions by rural dwellers of Burkina Faso and trends in meteorological data to discuss the importance of perceptions vis-à-vis climate trends in migration decision. Results showed that respondents perceived increasing temperature and worsening rainfall conditions over 1988–2007 matching with findings of previous studies but inconsistent with the trends observed in rainfall data. Given that climate change is recognized as a key driver of mobility on the one hand and the fact that climate change perceptions influence decision to migrate on the other hand, our results suggest to jointly include perceptions and climate data in future research on environmental migration in order to improve the understanding of household’s decision in response to climate change.

中文翻译：

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比较西非农村的气候变化认知和气象数据，以提高对家庭迁移决策的理解

很大程度上依赖雨养农业的西非人口可能会受到气候变化和多变性的严重影响。在本文中，我们对有关西非气候变化和变率认知的文献进行了回顾，然后深入比较了布基纳法索农村居民的认知和气象数据趋势，以讨论认知相对于气候变化的重要性。 - 移民决策中的气候趋势。结果显示，受访者认为 1988 年至 2007 年期间气温升高和降雨条件恶化，与之前的研究结果相符，但与降雨数据中观察到的趋势不一致。