Environmental loss Malawi’s ticking bomb


By Moses Phiri 2011-05-24
In Balaka where forests are scarce every tree counts and cutting down trees on someone’s piece of land is a serious crime—the same as theft of a herd of goat.

It is scary, people can be beaten to death if caught cutting down a tree in someone maize field, because trees are money too.

Materials for housing, lighting and firewood all come from trees from individual’s piece of land. Land is inherited or bought at exorbitant price and everyone future lies in how they protect their piece of land.

But what happens to public land, public forests, hills and mountains in Balaka?

Of course those who have depleted their trees look up to the mountains for trees. Today almost all mountains in the area are bare. The forest loss has piled more misery on people in Balaka—an early dry spell that almost wiped out all the maize.

Now they have to buy housing material, parrafin to light their homes and firewood. There is even little to harvest from their fields too.

The cost of degradation is too high to bear, as people in Balaka can testify. But Balaka case is just a tip of an iceberg.

At national level environmental degradation cost the economy $191 million —or in Malawi kwacha terms K26 billion.

This is an equivalent to 2009/10 budget for the subsidy fertilizer programme. This amount is also more than the total funding allocated to the education and health sectors in the 2009/10 annual budget.

“No doubt, Malawi is endowed with abundant natural resources, however, environmental sustainability is one of the challenges that Malawi faces as trends indicate persistent degradation on account of unsustainable use,” says Mzithembi Mbekeani, spokesperson for the Ministry of Development Planning and Cooperation.

In economic language, Malawi loses 5.3 percent of its annual general domestic product (GDP) due to unsustainable use of its natural resources.

This implies that the country would be K26, 574 million (US191m) richer annually—calculated in 2007 prices—if soil, forest, fisheries and wildlife resources were used sustainably according to new findings of a report that was commissioned on the Economic Analysis of Unsustainable use of Natural Resources in Malawi, with assistance from the UNDP, UNEP Poverty and Environment Initiative (PEI).

Unvailed last week, the findings are a wake up call to policy makers and budget drafters in particular that if we do not invest in protecting the environment, like a thin cow we can not milk it anymore.

Sadly, policy makers live in towns and cities. For many of them the environment means a well planned city with lots of flowers, smooth roads, running water, air conditioned rooms for conferences and a good sewer system sometimes. Even a few luxuries too.

But for Gogo Matiasi who lives on the edges of Toleza Farm in Balaka and 80 percent of Malawians their survival depends on renewable natural resources for their subsistence and household income.

Finance minister Kan Kandodo acknowledges that the foundation of the national economy is primarily rain-fed agriculture. Rain fed agriculture thrives on well endowed forests and natural reserves.

What is more worrying as the PEI study found out is that while the economic contribution made by renewable natural resources to Malawi is very significant it is not adequately captured in official statistics.

“Estimates of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) do not record the contribution of soils or wildlife. Even where natural resource use is recorded in GDP, the values tend to be understated.

“For example official GDP figures in Malawi significantly understate the true contribution of forestry by not capturing the extensive use of wood for fuel,” explained Michael Mmangisa project manager for PEI who presented the report to the media in Blantyre.

But why should we be worried? M’mangisa argues we should be worried, “be very worried.”

“Because there is compelling evidence that unsustainable natural resource management leads to increased poverty in Malawi.

For instance, World Bank data from 1992 indicated average annual agricultural yield loss of 4 percent to11 percent as a result of soil erosion, while a 2008 study by Bishop estimated mean annual yield losses of 8 percent to 25 percent,” he explains.

To relate, according to the findings, some evidence suggests that achieving annual 6 percent growth in agricultural yields during 2005-2015 would increase overall GDP growth by 3.2 percent to 4.8 percent per year, leading to the proportion in poverty falling to 34.5 percent by 2015.

This, however, is considerably lower than the 47.0 percent poverty rate projected in the absence of the additional agricultural growth.

“The 6 percent agricultural yield growth results in an additional 1.88 million people being lifted above the poverty. Moreover, if all the lost economic value from unsustainable resource use each year the impact on poverty would be much larger,” says M’mangisa.

Can we learn from elsewhere or may be we can look up to Botswana, a Karahari desert country of 1 million people?

In Botswana, capital lies in a natural resource, the desert and it vast diamonds. The country invests more in these natural wealth. But here at home the picture is different.

“If forest, fisheries and soil nutrient resources are used up faster than they are replenished, Malawi is consuming her natural capital at high speed” warns M’mangisa.

Source:- mosesphiri.blog.co.uk