By Wanangwa Tembo and Collings Kalivute

Kasungu, August 19, Mana: Owing to several factors, chief among them agriculture expansion and tobacco farming, Kasungu’s forests have been heavily cleared leaving the erstwhile thick landscapes bare and degraded.

Rapid deforestation is the major culprit to the environmental degradation as it triggers catastrophic impacts on wildlife, biodiversity, ecosystems and weather patterns.

In a country where 80 percent of the population are farmers, land degradation is a serious threat as it lowers crop production, exposing the majority to hunger and extreme poverty.

Malawi has lost over half of its forests in the past 40 years rendering nearly 80 percent of total land area vulnerable to experience degradation and Kasungu is one of the most affected districts.

Environmental District Officer, Herbert Bolokonya says Kasungu is not far from the national trends of land degradation and deforestation.

“Specifically, an analysis of soil erosion in selected Extension and Planning Areas indicates soil erosion rates ranging from 1.07 to 10.0 tonnes per hectare per year.

“Forests are also experiencing high deforestation rate estimated at 2.8 percent representing an annual average loss of 250,000 hectares of forest cover. As the statistics say, land degradation and soil erosion is on the negative trend and is supposed to be corrected,” Bolokonya says.

Land degradation is therefore a significant hindrance to the country’s overall economic development and achievement of the 2030 sustainable development targets. 

The World Bank Group, 2019 Malawi Country Environmental Analysis attributes the massive clearing of forests and the resultant land degradation to population growth.

It says: “Population growth places huge demand on natural systems with more land being converted to agriculture and more forests being harvested for the wood fuel supply.

“Climate change magnifies these impacts by putting greater strain on land and forests due to increased incidents of natural disasters and extreme weather events.”

Among others, the Bank cites weak land tenure security, unsustainable land management practices, shortage of funding for environmental management and weak institutions at lower levels of governance as proximate drivers of environmental degradation.

Globally, studies show that at least 20 to 40 percent of world’s total land experienced degradation thus affecting nearly half of the global population. 

In Kasungu, forests have been cleared largely due to agriculture expansion and tobacco farming activities. The district has the largest number of estates in the country and is one of the leading tobacco producers.

In 2015, Malawi joined forces with other African countries under African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative where it pledged to restore at least 4.5 million hectares of its degraded land by 2030.

This time, more non-state actors, including the Jesuit Centre for Ecology and Development (JCED), have joined the government with efforts to restore degraded landscapes through reforestation initiatives.

JCED, a social and sustainable development work of the Society of Jesus of the Southern Africa Province, engages in resilience building, adaptation and climate justice advocacy targeting those most affected and vulnerable in rural and marginalised communities.

In Kasungu, JCED has partnered with schools through a Green Schools initiative aimed at promoting environmental conservation.

Light Changatuwa, a Standard 7 learner at Kasungu LEA Primary School is among the 30 members under the school’s JCED supported conservation club engaged in landscape restoration through afforestation, sustainable agriculture and bee keeping.

She says under the club she has learnt and embraced the spirit of planting trees and taking care of the environment both at school and home.

“I have learnt a lot under this club as we focus much on planting trees at our school as well as our respective homes.

“We also learn how to take care of the trees so that they should survive," she says.

Changatuwa says there are a lot of trees that are planted in the country but the landscapes remain bare because most of those trees do not survive due to lack of care.

She says: “If we plant trees and fail to take care of them, the survival rate is lowered.

“Through our club, we learn how to take care of the trees so that they survive, otherwise all the effort invested in nursery preparation and the actual planting would be in vain.”

Joseph Kagwamtsabola, a teacher at the school, is the club’s patron and applauds the learners for dedicating their time to making the school campus and homes green.

He says through the Green School initiative, learners have also been taught modern and sustainable ways of farming alongside environmental conservation.

“This is a good initiative because at an early stage, learners are taught environmental conservation not just in theory but in practice.

“If these efforts are replicated in many schools nationwide, we can instruct a new mindset in the children which will help to bring back our forests and sustain them for the benefit of learners themselves and the generations to come,” he says.

Within four years of the project implementation, Kasungu LEA Primary has managed to grow a forest of its own.

“Before this initiative, all the land here was bare, but with the coming of JCED, we formulated a conservation club that has turned our school into a model when it comes to environmental conservation,” Kagwamtsabola says.

He stresses the need to intensify sensitisation on the importance of conservation arguing the adoption to landscape restoration has been generally slow in the communities.  

"Much as we are trying our level best to conserve the environment, some community members are letting us down as they come here and cut down trees when we are not around,” he says.

The initiative, a sub component of the larger Tasintha Mlimi project that seeks to build and strengthen the resilience capacity of vulnerable farmers to climate change, is also in practice in eight other schools in Sub-Traditional Authorities (STA) Ndume, Chisazima and Suza.

STA Chisazima, who is among the leaders that have embraced and supported landscape restoration activities within her jurisdiction with support from JCED, says the future is green.

“As a community, we are fully supporting the project such that on our part, we have managed to plant 7, 550 trees along Chitete stream which is fast silting and causing flash floods.”

She says the silting of the stream which is also the main source of water for the entire Kasungu municipality has been as a result of agricultural activities along its banks.

Equally, out of school youths in the area of STA Chisazima have also joined forces in nature conservation upon realizing through the initiative that the future rests on them.

Ephraim Phiri, 19, from the area says the youths recognise that environmental conservation is everyone’s responsibility hence their active participation in landscape restoration.

Officer for the project, Mathews Phwandaphwanda says the initiative follows key issues identified in Kasungu District Development Plan of 2017 to 2022.

“So this initiative is a response to such concerns as low productivity due to land degradation, unstable weather conditions and climate variability including erratic rainfall, strong winds, hail storms and dry spells.

“There is also massive deforestation due to tobacco farming, poor farming practices and increased demand for farm land,” says Phwandaphwanda.

He says JCED has been witnessing continued threat to food security and nutrition deficiencies, low income, extreme poverty, land degradation, and loss of biodiversity.

“The Green School initiative is one of the many conservation interventions that we are supporting in the district,” he says.

The deforested state of Kasungu indicates the loss of valuable natural resources and the degradation of the local ecosystem, a phenomenon that has significantly impacted on the landscape and the overall ecological balance.

Beyond mitigating climate change and preserving biodiversity, conservation efforts provide essential ecosystem services such as clean air, water, soil erosion control, and act as a natural buffer against natural disasters.

It also supports livelihoods, and enhance the overall quality of life for communities.

Thus, inclusive conservation approaches that take everybody, including pupils on board, could be the key to greening the landscapes again and achieve food security amidst unpredictable climatic patterns.