FEATURE

Malawi comes face to face with climate change

By Raphael Mweninguwe

CREDIT: Wilderness Safaris

LILONGWE, 5 June 2007 – Three years ago, when drought claimed lives and livelihoods in Malawi, science pointed a finger at climate change. Early this year and as experienced in the recent past during the rainy season, thousands of people were displaced in the Lower Shire due to floods. These displaced poor communities or environmental refugees, faced a number of problems – their economic activities stopped, schools were deserted as classrooms were submerged in water and crops destroyed.

During the last growing season, farmers in Kasungu District in the Central region, harvested poorly due to a prolonged dry spell. Climate change, again, said environmental scientists, was the cause as well as for the worst floods in recent history for neighbouring Mozambique.

The effects of extreme climate change include low agricultural production, which cause hunger, malnutrition and loss of human and animal life, depletion of livelihoods, for Malawi, which relies on rain fed agriculture.

Climate change is a result of human activities such as emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere and desertification. In 1972, the United Nations General Assembly set aside June 5 as World Environment Day with to draw global attention on the importance of the environment and stimulate political attention and action.

UN Country Coordinator/UNDP Resident Representative Michael Keating says, “Malawi’s poverty reduction is linked to sustainable environmental management. Malawi is very much affected by climate change. An estimated 85% of the population live in the rural areas and depend on agriculture. In periods of drought millions of people are at risk of dying of hunger.”

The theme this year for World Environment Day is “Melting Ice: A hot topic?” Malawi has no melting ice but the effects of melting ice in countries such as Norway, are felt globally.

“We are all locked up in a vicious circle. Any change in global warming has a bearing on a poor farmer in Malawi. Melting glaciers leads to increase sea levels, which has an impact on the weather changes. There is an increase in floods and this year’s floods are clear examples of unpredictable weather as a result of climate change,” explained Keating.

Over two-thirds of Malawi’s thirteen million people live below the national poverty line and more than forty percent cannot read or write. While they may not fully comprehend the scientific terminology of global warming or climate change, the have experienced its impact. Can they help reverse the trends?

CREDIT: Wilderness Safaris

Everyone, for example, should understand why deforestation is dangerous to both present and future generations. Deserts are expanding and the more trees are cut and burnt, the more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. By planting more trees, carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere. It is this gas (commonly called the greenhouse gas or GHG), which warms the atmosphere causing the ice to melt.

Malawi’s Minister of Energy, Mines and Natural Resources, Hon. Henry Chimunthu-Banda recently launched the carbon sequestration and other ecosystem service programme, whose aim is to reduce GHG.
According to the Minister, the programme not only offers carbon trading but also an economic empowerment to the communities through forests products.

While applauding the programme, Keating said more could be done, including, “rethink and redesign these projects based on national priorities, in which case food security as Malawi’s top priority.”

“Majority of the farmers do not know how to use the land. They do not know how to capture water and irrigate crops. The country is losing over 50,000 ha of trees each year. This is serious and the national projects should be aimed at addressing these issues,” said Keating.

Keating said as the world commemorates the World Environment Day, Malawi should think about protecting her natural resources such as forests, animal species and fishes. He suggests incentives that would help protect these resources and law enforcers should be more assertive to protect the environment.

But not all Malawi’s climatic poor conditions are her own making. Countries such as the US and China are the biggest polluters and yet these rich nations have not committed enough resources to poor nations such as Malawi to deal with the problems.

The US the world’s biggest polluter refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol calls for rich nations to reduce their GHG emissions between the years 2008-2012 to the levels that are 5.2% lower than those of 1990 are.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) early this year released a report, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, which assesses the current scientific knowledge of the natural and human drivers of climate change, observed changes in climate, the ability of science to attribute changes to different causes, and projections for future climate change.

The report faults human activities as the main cause of climate change. “Changes in the atmospheric abundance of greenhouse gases and aerosols, in solar radiation and in land surface properties alter the energy balance of the climate system... Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years” reads the report.

This report indicates that both the rich and poor are responsible for climate change but rich countries are not doing enough to deal with the problem.

For now, Malawi reliance on firewood and charcoal will continue as long as clean energy continues to be expensive.

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The writer is an independent environment correspondent based in Malawi