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Maize farmer Estela Njolo, of Kunthembwe village, Malawi. "The weather's not like when I was a child. There's been a big change. Rainfall doesn't come when we expect it." Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Oxfam.
The challenges of poverty and climate change are intertwined for the people of Malawi. As Oxfam’s Alex Renton discovered, so are the possible solutions.
Everyone you meet in Malawi is talking about climate change. And they are frightened. Some people say that the great lake that gave the little southern African country its name and provideshalf its protein will be gone in 20 years. Others know that the forest is disappearing and watch the relentless rise in price of the charcoal that most people use for fuel. Everyone knows that the three food crises that have hit the country this decade are in some way due to the changes they’ve all seen in the once-predictable Malawian weather.
Non-government organisations have praised Malawi’s National Adaptation Program of Action on climate changefor the level of its response to the new challenges, especially an active policy on deforestation. But, even in the south, where the population suffered the most in the country’s three droughts since2002, people only have a vague notionof what the solution might be.
Among government workers there seems to be little knowledge of how to address climate change at villageand forest level. But this may change. Since February 2007, the Malawian Government has been taking tougher measures over carbon emissions and the army has been given the responsibility of stopping illegal logging.
But there’s understandable resentment, too, as Malawi faces up to the inevitability of change. As one government official put it to me: “Malawi is paying the price for the activities of rich nations. According to American statistics Malawi emits less than a quarter of a million metric tons of carbon equivalent a year. In 2002 the United States emitted 6,000 times as much as we did — 1,500 million tonnes.”
Malawi’s carbon emissions are primarily from the burning of trees for fuel, which has resulted in one of the highest deforestation rates in southern Africa. But the burning of trees is, as in many poor societies, a means of income and work and, therefore, difficult to reduce.
According to Thomas Bwanali of Shire Highlands Milk Producers — an Oxfam partner working to help small-scale dairy farmers produce and market their wares — people are aware of climate changes and government efforts to reduce deforestation, but have difficulties linking the two, especially when faced with the competing challenge of earning enough money to pay for food and school fees.
Charcoal sellers Manuel Grant and Joseph Kaufa walked 60km to buy charcoal to sell at the market in Blantyre, Malawi. There is so much deforestation in the area that traders have to travel further to find wood. Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Oxfam.
“I have a neighbour whose daughter was selected for secondary school. He needs to find 1,500 kwacha (AUD $11) to pay the fees,” Thomas said. “He has no money, so he cuts down a tree, turns it into charcoal and sells it in town. How can I tell him that’s a wrong thing to do?”
Shire Highlands Milk Producers is working to address the expected rise in climate-related problems by helping small farmers increase farm production by diversifying the types of crops grown and branching into other types of farming. In rural areas, 85 per cent of Malawians depend on a single crop of maize each year. If they have other means of feeding their family, or gaining an income, when one crop fails they are less likely to sell their land, or cut down trees. Owning a dairy cow or two is one idea.
We visited a school at Chisawani, outside Blantyre, where 1,900 children get a daily meal of porridge free. The porridge is made from milk that Shire Highlands Milk Producers supply.
It’s a great program on several fronts — farmers get a better price for their milk than they might get from a commercial dairy; school enrolments have improved as children are keen to attend if they know there’s a hot meal there; and it helps tackle Malawi’s terrible nutrition problem where 50 per cent of primary school children are under-developed physically or mentally.
Volunteers cook the porridge on stoves in the schoolyard. The stoves are a real step forward from the basic arrangement of three stones and some firewood that one sees across Africa. The rocket stove — manufactured in Malawi for about AUD $190 — is enclosed and can use any plant matter or animal manure asfuel. According to Martin Mganga, who helps organise the school feeding for the agency Mary’s Meals, the stoves are amazingly efficient.
“We need perhaps three sticks for the fire where before we’d have used 10,” Martin said. The World Food Programme, which feeds some 500,000 school children in Malawi everyday, has promised to make sure all the stoves it uses are of similar design and efficiency.
At this primary school in Blantyre, 1,900 children receive a free meal of porridge every day. The porridge is made from milk supplied by one of Oxfam’s partners, which helps local farmers diversify their income sources. Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Oxfam.
The charcoal-selling trade around the city of Blantyre, where most natural forest has been cleared, is one of the most visible illustrations of the problems of educating people about the dangers of deforestation. It is illegal to cut down trees in the parks around the town, and in the forest reserves outside it. Yet fuel is crucial — winters are chillyhere and food must be cooked.
The Michiru Mountain forest reserve, the nearest protected site for wildlife and trees, just 10 kilometres from the city, is a target for people needing firewood. We went for a walk there with Gilbert Nbomo, who has worked in the forest as a ranger for 10 years and knows the wood intuitively. “The rains have come much later over the last three or four years, and you can really see the effects of that in the trees,” he said.
“The leaves of many species are growing differently: they’re smaller, or not as thick. The rains are heavier, more water falls in a shorter time, so we get more soil erosion than we used to. There’s no obvious effect yet on the animals — but there is one on humans. There’s a plant, a bush that we use to harvest to make brushes for cleaning. It seems to be disappearing.”
Such forest controls are complemented by an energetic tree-planting program that the Malawian Government’s Department of Forestry is promoting, with help and advice from organisations like Oxfam. Earlier this year I went to the department’s Forest-Based Enterprise Fair, which featured stalls promoting sustainable forest products, such as juices made from baobab trees, and honey from semi-cultivated bees. All this showed that, wisely, the government’s approach to reforestation was driven by the sense that Malawians must learn to use the forest as a resource, caring for it because it can provide incomes beyond the one-off earnings received from chopping down a mature tree for fuel.
...50 per cent of primary school children are under-developed physically or mentally.
In the villages around Blantyre, though, you get a sense of how government decrees may have little impact on people driven by poverty and the need to find fuel or earn an income.
Near the village of Kaliati, Manuel Grant and Joseph Kaufa, both in their 20s, told us how they have been pushing their bikes — piled impossibly high with bundles of charcoal — for two days, from a forest 64km away on the Mozambique border.
“That’s the only forest that’s left and that’s safe for us,” Manuel said. “People cut down trees there, and make them into charcoal. We buy this load for 600 kwacha (AUD $4.40) and we sell it in Blantyre for 1,900 (AUD $14). It’s hard work, but there are no other jobs. And I have a family to feed in Blantyre.”