Climate-driven agricultural migration improves livelihoods but risks nationalizing deforestation and climate vulnerability: evidence from Kafinda game management area in Zambia

Climate variability, worsened by extensive deforestation from traditional animal-drawn farming involving complete clearing and stump burning, is exacerbating drought in Zambia's Southern Province. This is driving local Tonga-speaking farming communities to permanently migrate to higher-rainfall regions. However, the livelihood and environmental consequences of this movement remain poorly quantified. From 2020 to 2025, we used a mixed-methods approach combining structured surveys, interviews, transect walks and satellite imagery analysis to establish the consequences of this migration. We evaluated crop yields, livelihoods, farming practices and forest cover change among 87 migrant households across six villages in Kafinda Game Management Area (KGMA), Chitambo District. Among migrant households, maize yields increased dramatically from about 10 to 72 tons and revenue from ZMW 70,000 to 464,100 per household. This resulted in marked improvements in food security (53% to 87%) and in households' ability to afford quality health services (43% to 84%), decent shelter (38% to 77%), quality clothing (48% to 96%) and education (49% to 93%). However, 85% of these households continued with deforestation-prone animal-drawn farming in KGMA, with only 15% adopting climate-smart practices. As a result, mean farm size expanded from 4.48 ha to 30.9 ha, causing a 32.7% forest cover loss (42,549 ha to 26,026 ha) within Community Forest Management Areas. As the first assessment in KGMA buffering Kasanka National Park, our results show permanent climate-driven migration improves livelihoods but transfers climate vulnerability via deforestation. Continued unsustainable farming risks nationalizing localized degradation. Culturally compatible climate-smart farming practices are urgently needed to ensure sustainable livelihood gains and foster genuine national climate resilience.