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Abstract:
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This document looks at the history of forest conservation in Malawi from the period before independence, early post independence during the time of Kamuzu Banda era, and the multi-party democracy period. All these periods have their own milestones and challenges in forest conservation and management in Malawi.
The paper also looks at forest cover trends in Malawi. In general, Malawi has lost her forest cover by over 40% between 1972 and 1990. This figure should be much less now. More forest cover has been lost in communal areas compared to public protected areas. There are many factors that have led to forest cover loss
amongst which are:
(a) high population growth,
(b) opening of forests for settlements and agriculture; tobacco growing, biomass energy, brick burning, urbanization and
(c) inadequate budgetary support from government.
The paper tries to look at the policy and legal framework to justify and underscore the fact that Malawi has the necessary policy and legal instruments in place for effective forest and tree management. A number of supporting instruments such as programmes and strategies also exist. It is also found that a number of interventions have taken place by government, local communities and the private sector to address the issue of forest and tree management in Malawi. To this end, a review of some public and community forest programmes has been made.
Despite the existence of a robust policy and legal framework, existence of strategies,
programmes and guidelines and many interventions done by both government, private sector and civil society, a number of issues have been identified which are impinging on sustainable forest and tree management in Malawi.
Some of these issues include but are not limited to the following:-
(a) land tenure and ownership of trees and forests,
(b) policy and implementation failure,
(c) influence of politics;
(d) laisser-faire approach to forest management,
(e) professional concubinage,
(f) corruption,
(g) poor governance at local level,
(h) in-efficient administration and weak leadership;
(i) inadequate funding and its prioritization and globalization and Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPS).
The document concludes with some recommendations on the way forward and possible advocacy issues and actions for CURE and its partners to engage Government of Malawi and the people of Malawi if our forests and trees are to be sustainably managed. |