Environmental feature


By Frazer Potani, Lilongwe, Malawi

Since time immemorial around the month of March in Malawi farmers smile because their maize looks green with healthy cobs promising a bumper harvest.
However, Jasteni Chakanika in Phalula area in Balaka District over 200 Km from Lilongwe City is angry and frustrated.
Last year he grew cotton but his 30 lint bales were turned into breeding ground for rats and termites after abandoning them because he was irked by poor low prices that were even below cotton production cost buyers offered on the market.
Chakanika therefore, decided in September last year to prepare his garden earlier to grow maize.
Lucky enough he was among the few peasant farmers who benefited from Malawi Government’s fertilizer subsidy programme that has seen Malawi produce surplus maize in the past four years, ending hunger which in the past afflicted nearly one in every two citizens in the country’s 13 million plus population.
“I bought seeds at K100 [about 70 US cents] per bag and 50 Kg fertilizer bag at K500 [over $3.30 US Dollars] and planted with the first rains,” says Chakanika while wiping sweat on his forehead with back of his right hand.
“Little did I know that a dry spell will spoil all my hopes of producing food, as a result, maize plants have wilted before even producing cobs in the gardens,” says Chakanika as he points to his withered maize crop in his garden.
He adds that he does not know where to get seeds and fertilizer for replanting.
“I don’t know even where I and my seven family members are going to get food following this crop failure. I have heard that our weather is changing and I think this might be true because the last time I had ever seen anything of this nature was in 1949 when I was an eight-year-old boy. Malawi experienced a severe drought that year,” says 69-year-old Chakanika.
Every day people talk a lot about the weather, which is not surprising when one considers the influence it has on one’s mood, how one dresses and eats.
However, climate change is different from weather because it is the average pattern of weather for a particular region over a long period of time.
Chakanika and his family including Balaka area are not alone experiencing negative impacts of climate change.
In fact their experiences are just signs of the times of the worst disasters yet to come if every Malawian and person on the planet is not cautious to take action to stop the climate change wheel from continuing turning.
An estimated 40 per every 100 people (2.6 in the 6.5 billion plus global population) already risk facing first hand devastating impacts of climate change according to the 2007/08 UNDP Human Development Report.
The report says Africa is far among the most vulnerable regions.
“In Malawi, temperatures may increase by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius by 2050, with a decline in rainfall and reduced water availability,” says the report.
It adds that the combination of higher temperatures and less rain in Malawi will entail a reduction in soil moisture, affecting 90 percent of smallholder farmers like Chakanika who depend on rain-fed agricultural production.
In short the report says the sustainable livelihoods of rural communities like Balaka in Malawi will be negatively affected because droughts and floods due to climate change will have an adverse impact on agriculture, fisheries, water, health and energy.
“Continuing with business as usual almost certainly means dangerous, perhaps catastrophic, climate change during the course of this century, will be a serious problem perhaps as early as 2050. This is the most important challenge for this generation of politicians,” says European Commission’s President Jose Manuel Barroso.
The European Union (EU) says understanding the basics of climate change is easier than it may sound.
“Energy from the sun warms the earth’s surface, and as the temperature increases, heat is radiated back into the atmosphere as infra-red energy. Some of the energy is absorbed within the atmosphere by greenhouse gases,” says the union.
The union says the atmosphere acts in a similar way to walls of a greenhouse, letting in the visible light and absorbing the outgoing infra-red energy, keeping it warm inside.
It adds that this natural process is called the ‘greenhouse effect’. Without it, the global average temperature on earth would be -18 degrees Celsius, where as at the moment it is +15 degrees Celsius.
“However, human activities are adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, which enhance the natural greenhouse effect, making the world warmer. This man-made extra warming is called ‘enhanced greenhouse effect,” says the EU also modern Roman Empire.
The empire says the scientific community is even unanimous that climate change is connected to greenhouse gas emissions and that much of these emissions are created by man-kind.
“Global greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities increased by 70 percent between 1970 and 2004, the main sources being energy supply, industry, forestry, agriculture and transport,” says the union.
The union adds that since around the turn of the 21st Century, the fast development and rapid rate of industrialization in emerging countries like China and India has also resulted in further dramatic increases in their emission rates.
President Bingu wa Mutharika says although major culprits fueling climate change are rich developed countries like the US, poor developing countries like Malawi are already licking wounds of its devastating
impacts.
“Its [climate change] impact will further severely affect the poor especially women and children in this country if measures are not put in place to control it,” says Mutharika a former World Bank and IMF economist now chairing African Union (AU).
However, there is a proof that some best practices can create opportunities against climate change related disasters.
Such a proof is under the 10 th European Development Fund (EDF) running between 2008 and 2013 in Malawi with a 451 million euros (over K98.3 billion) EU allocation to Malawi government.
Development projects and programmes under the EDF have integrated environmental practices that are curbing disasters such as drought, soil erosion, water scarcity, hunger and deforestation.
The adaptation and mitigation measures in the EU-funded projects and programmes in Malawi are among other things divided thematically under Agriculture, Forestry and Disaster Preparedness.
Given that 95 percent of agricultural activities in Malawi are rain-dependent, variations in either the amount of distribution of rainfall leads to reduced domestic agricultural production.
In turn, this leads to reduced national food availability, cause food insecurity as in 2004/05, the latest major food crisis in Malawi.
To overcome this, the EU is implementing the Farm Income Diversification Programme (FIDP) and the Income-Generating Public Works Programme (IGWP) including many activities designed to adapt to dry spells in Malawi.
Water harvesting enables farmers to set up irrigation schemes thereby diversifying their production and counter bad harvests for specific crops.
By setting up stream diversions, canals and storage ponds linked to aquaculture, communities’ vulnerability to dry spells is reduced.
“Previously we struggled to have just one meal per day. But we are now able to eat three times a day, send children to school and meet our needs because we are growing several crops per season through irrigation instead of relying on rain-fed agriculture,” says Christina Mwafongo,49, a beneficiary of the FIDP project at Lukyala irrigation scheme in Karonga, northern Malawi.
Under same project farmers are also able to establish crop fields and fruit orchards, as well as water-holding ponds and fish ponds.
In Junju and Ntchenachena in Rumphi also northern Malawi farmers are even killing two birds with one stone by growing pineapples which boost their nutrition, generate income and help protect the soil during intense rainfall.
While in Misuku Hills in Chitipa in the same region coffee farmers are encouraged to create terraces and plant vertiver grass to reduce potential soil erosion.
As high demand for firewood for heating and cooking in urban areas continues to drive many people to non-sustainable forest activities for survival, poor over-exploitation of forest resources has become part of life in Malawi.
“Of great concern is that the wanton cutting down of trees in this country has led to massive deforestation. Some areas that were previously not floods prone areas now experience them because their land including slopes have no trees even to conserve the soil they till for agricultural production,” says Malawi’s former vice-president Justin Malewezi.
To change people’s mindset to save trees however, the EU’s Improved Forestry Management for Sustainable Livelihoods (IFMSL) programme is ensuring that 12 forest reserves as well as buffer zones around them, are jointly managed by government and people living within the local communities in these areas.
Since 2005 the programme has already contributed over 23,858 hectares of forest area being managed according to forest-management plans.
The programme has also over 10,500 hectares of customary forests being set aside for regeneration.
The project has also seen 23 million trees protected on customary land and an additional 1.9 million trees planted.
In Mona Village in Kasungu District, 120 Km from Lilongwe in the central region, Efasi Ndau, a member of a firewood collecting club, is also reaping from an EU eight-year forestry management project.
“My life has improved since this project came in my village. We are not only saving trees from extinction but also generating income through firewood sales for sustaining our livelihoods,” says Ndau whose club sells firewood at Kasalika nutrition-rehabilitation centre for young children in the district.
While his peers are busy with farm crops such as maize, beans and coffee, 13-year-old boy Joseph Mkumbwa still at school in Misuku Hills in Chitipa in the north has also been taking part in the forestry project.
“I have a 2.5 hectare plantation,” says Mkumbwa whose vision is that in 25 years time the seedlings he has planted will mature into trees.
In the plantation there are pines, cypresses and eucalyptus trees.
Under same project the EU is contributing to the planting of jatropha trees, the oil of which is used as an alternative to paraffin lamps and cooking stoves in rural communities.
The oil is extracted with hand presses. In addition to functioning as bio-fuel, the oil has the benefit of repelling mosquitoes hence contributing in the fight against malaria mainly threat to under-five children and pregnant women in Malawi.
“I used to study under pressure during the day because there was no money for paraffin for our lamp at night. Now I am able to study at night because I have a lamp running on jatropha oil,” says 11-year-old Noria Gangu at Mitondo Primary School. She wants to become a nurse.
Her school has a woodlot of jatropha trees.
The EU jointly with the National Initiative for Civic Education (NICE), farmers are also learning the benefits of planting trees on bear land.
The farmers even now know that trees absorb carbon dioxide and reduce air pollution.
In Lilongwe Urban area for instance, Tasaukila farming group members meet to discuss methods to improve their farming and how to preserve the environment.
“We now appreciate the importance of trees hence decided to plant trees on our plots of land,” says Khaulitsani Mbewe, a member of the group.
Other EU funded projects activities have also been designed to reduce wood demand.
The IGPWP for instance is among other things providing village-forestry clubs with inputs and training on the use of energy-saving clay stoves for heating and cooking.
Communities are eager to use the stoves after having been adequately trained.
Under Micro-Projects Programme (MPP) EU has also developed the practice of using sand-cement blocks and soil-stabilized blocks in its construction projects.
The main, and less durable, alternative would be otherwise red bricks, but these are baked with firewood and thus contribute to massive deforestation.
One such MPP beneficiary construction is Bwanje Post Office in Ntcheu District, 160 Km from Lilongwe which has such environment-friendly sand-cement blocks.
As climate change and other factors have among other things led to an increase in the frequency and intensity of floods, on Disaster Preparedness, the EU has been funding trainings for Malawian communities on how to respond to emergencies.
The Executive Director for Malawi’s oldest Non-Governmental -Organization (NGO), the Wildlife Environmental Society of Malawi (WESM), Daulosi Maumbeta, says if societies fully adopt and implement best practices climate change could be mitigated.
“Climate change is both an opportunity and a challenge,” he says.