Talking deforestation in Malawi

Eyewitness account

A friend of mine recently returned from a month-long trip around Southern Africa and in our catch up conversation, I learned about how Malawi - in the ten year interval since we last travelled there - is almost unrecognisable in the face of rampant deforestation.

Malawi - affectionately known as the warm heart of Africa - has dropped off the donor aid and media radar in recent years, but it remains one of the poorest countries in Africa with 60% of its 12 million population living below the poverty line.

The result is a desperate attempt by the people of Malawi to eek out an existence from the country's remaining natural resources.

The economy has never been a sophisticated one, with people subsisting from fishing in Lake Malawi and to some extent craft where 'Malawi Chairs' became an iconic feature of African carving, but agriculture has never been the country's strong suit.

In the south of the country where the population is densest - the people have begun chopping down the forests at a rate of one football pitch every ten minutes. The wood is used for firewood or to make charcoal and yields little more than $15 for each tree felled. In return, the country is now battling the devastating effects of soil erosion, silting up of its dams and impoverished soils - so that growing the traditional cassava is futile without added fertilisers..

Malawi's accelerated descent into poverty

When did it all start going pear-shaped? It seems fair to suggest that in 1994, when the new constitution decentralised the government and returned autonomy to the local chiefs that resources begun being consumed without any regard for an overarching conservation strategy and certainly without any thought for sustainability.

Corruption and a lack of national law has allowed illegal logging to extract vast quantities of hardwoods without any responsibility to the people or the environment.

Since virtually no new infrastructure has been added to the country in twenty years, only 2% of the population have access to electricity. The bulk of the population therefore rely on biomass for their energy needs. The poorest people - largely illiterate - have little understanding of the consequences of their actions from famine to flood as the daily challenge of feeding themselves is prioritised.

Grassroots development agency making ripples...

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. A local development agency called Ripple Africa is working on establishing 400 nurseries that will be capable of planting 12 000 trees a year each and produce 4 million tree saplings in total. Sustainable forestry is a policy that should have been applied thirty years ago in Malawi - through ongoing consultation with the regional chiefs, this is exactly what Ripple Africa is trying to achieve.

In addition to planting tree saplings, Ripple Africa are also encouraging the locals to plant ground nuts which return nitrogen to the soil and can be cross-planted with other cash crops.

I'm always amazed at how casual conversations with like minded people can produce incredible ideas. My friends are people who are as passionate as I am about a prosperous Africa. Take a look at this video clip to hear about some of the other ideas we came across to strengthen Malawi's food security and lift her people out of poverty: