Disappearing Forests In Malawi
Disappearing forests in MalawiCauses and solutionsAmber KerrEEP 153 Research ProjectMay 30, 2005
AbstractMalawi has exceptionally high rates of population growth (3.1%) anddeforestation (2.4%), suggesting a Malthusian link between the two. Themost important proximal cause of forest loss in Malawi has been theexpansion of agricultural land. Population growth has been an importantdriver for this process, but is an insufficient explanation by itself. InMalawi’s case, it has been coupled with a lack of outmigration and aninability to intensify agricultural production on existing land due to highinput costs. Furthermore, unequal land distribution resulting from thecolonial estate system accelerated the displacement of farmers intomarginal areas, while a loss of traditional land tenure rules left communalforests vulnerable to encroachment and exploitation. Now that most arableland has already been cleared, the main threat to Malawi's forests iscontinuing fuelwood demand.Malawi’s current environmental laws have many provisions for forestprotection, but are lacking in enforcement. Nevertheless, a variety of shortterm solutions seem possible, including agroforestry trees to increase woodsupply, efficient charcoal-making to reduce demand, and agriculturalintensification and land redistribution to reduce forest encroachment.Long-term solutions include community management of forests,diversifying foreign exchange beyond Malawi’s environmentallydestructive mainstay of tobacco, and reducing fertility rates with integratedfamily planning programs. Most of these solutions will have additionalbenefits such as economic growth, food security, and public health. Whenall the costs and benefits are considered, tackling the problem ofdeforestation in Malawi seems not only possible but imperative.
IntroductionDisaster is the only reason this tiny African country ever makes the news. “Hunger in Malawi,”reads the headline from the UN World Food Programme1. The accompanying photo shows aMalawian farmer, Helen Mripe, in her maize field. She tries to smile for the camera but herbrow is creased with worry. She holds out a few cobs of maize, all that is left to feed her familyof eight. Behind her, as far as the eye can see, stretches a patchwork of withered fields andshrubland. Standing watch over the landscape is a single lonely tree.Is this story as simple, and as hopeless, as it appears? Have the forests have disappeared becauseof Helen Mripe’s eight children and countless others like them? At first glance, it looks asthough rapid population growth has led to a downward spiral of soil erosion, land degradation,poverty, and hunger. However, the causes of Malawi’s deforestation may be more subtle thanthey seem at first. This paper will attempt to unravel some of the causes, with the goal ofidentifying short-term and long-term solutions.The central question: Does population growth cause deforestation?Malawi has one of the highest rates of population growth in the world, a 3.1% annual increase(PRB, 2004). Malawi’s annual deforestation rate is approximately 2.4% (FAO, 2001), alsoamong the highest on record. The sheer magnitude of these rates of change makes Malawi aninteresting case study to explore the population-deforestation link. Are the two trends related,and if so, is it a case of cause and effect?If the link proves as robust as many researchers believe, this has bleak implications for Malawi.Malawi is among the world’s least developed nations; its Human Development Index rank is165th out of 177 countries (UNDP, 2004). With indicators such as life expectancy and percapita income near rock bottom – and showing no signs of improvement – it is not realistic toexpect a prompt demographic transition in Malawi. Furthermore, Malawi is heavily dependenton agriculture, heightening its vulnerability to the effects of deforestation. The country’s futurehinges upon the presence of intervening factors that can moderate the environmental impact ofits population.There is a more hopeful reason to focus on Malawi, too. It has recently made a peacefultransition to democratic governance and has enacted several key pieces of environmentallegislation. Malawi seems to have the political will to pursue solutions to deforestation.However, the existence of solutions is by no means guaranteed; as French (1986) laments, “tosay the problem is intolerable does not necessarily mean that it can be solved.”What is deforestation, and what are its effects?Even defining the issue is not straightforward, as there are a variety of definitions for “forest”and “deforestation.” Probably the most widely-accepted definition is that of FAO (2005), whichconsiders a forest to be any land with greater than 10% cover of trees over 5 m high. By this1Source: http://www.wfp.org/newsroom/photo gallery/Malawi/03.html (July 15, 2002).-2-
standard, deforestation is the act of depleting forest cover to less than 10%. If that threshold isnot reached, the change is instead considered “forest degradation.”Simply defining a threshold for tree cover is not enough, however. Should significantagricultural encroachment disqualify an area as “forest,” regardless of the percentage tree cover?Should a distinction be made between depleted forests and natural savannahs? Shouldmonoculture plantations, or indeed any planted trees, be excluded? And how should the originaltree cover of an area be estimated? These decisions are necessarily arbitrary, and it is importantto note that they often vary depending on the purpose of the study.It is also worth questioning whether deforestation, however it is defined, is always undesirable.Certainly, the process has many harmful effects: as well as the loss of fuelwood and other treeproducts, deforestation can cause soil erosion and degradation, flooding, and changes in localand global climate, not to mention cultural and biological diversity loss. However, these costsshould be weighed against the benefits of deforestation, namely food production and incomegeneration. Many countries have benefited from unsustainable exploitation of their forests: forexample, between 1700 and 1900, approximately 55% of the forests in the eastern United Statesdisappeared (Houghton and Hackler, 2000). So, although the costs of deforestation can besevere, sometimes deforestation is a logical economic decision (Walker, 2004).Theories of deforestationTropical deforestation has become a topic of great concern to environmentalists over the pastseveral decades. This concern has sparked a variety of theories, some complementary and somecontradictory, about the causes of deforestation. Several of the more influential theories aredescribed below.The classic Malthusian viewpoint is straightforward: more people, less forest. In other words,increasing population in rural areas leads to deforestation, usually through the mechanism of landclearing for agriculture (Figure 1). This is still the prevalent discourse amongst natural resourcemanagers in the tropics (Adger, 2001; Walker, 2004). However, it is increasingly beingsupplemented by other theories, or rejected altogether in favor of more populist viewpoints(Kaimowitz, 2002). After a thorough review of literature worldwide, Carr (2004) concludes that“data generally support a positive association between deforestation and population growth at thefarm, national, and regional levels,” but adds that there are always intervening factors.Another well-known theory with Malthusian overtones is the “fuelwood gap,” which states thatdeforestation occurs when fuelwood demand exceeds the net fuelwood production of availableforests. An extension of this idea is the “fuelwood trap” (Figure 2), describing a vicious circlebetween deforestation and poverty. The “fuelwood gap” theory has to some degree fallen out offavor, as evidence accumulates that fuelwood harvesting is often sustainable and comes fromnon-forest trees (for example, Mahiri and Howorth, 2001).Timber extraction by multinational logging companies has received much attention as a cause ofdeforestation (perhaps a disproportional amount of attention, as only a small fraction of tropicaltimber is actually destined for the export market). A more important effect may be that road--3-
OverpopulationPovertyUnsustainableacceleration oftraditional “slash -&burn” agricultureDEFORESTATIONFigure 1. The currently dominant “Neo-Malthusian” discourse on tropicaldeforestation (adapted from Adger et al., 2001.)Figure 2. The “fuelwood trap” theory as described by Wunder (2000).building for timber extraction opens up previously inaccessible areas to human settlement, thusindirectly leading to land use change (Wunder, 2000; Walker, 2004).More generally, it is thought that free trade can accelerate deforestation, especially when massiveexternal debt pushes a country to produce agricultural or forest products as quickly as possible inorder to repay its loans (Wunder, 2000; Ehrhardt-Martinez, 2002). There is some evidence thatthat trade liberalization has contributed to deforestation in Tanzania and Zambia (Minde et al.,2001); however, the opposite effect has been observed in Mexico. It is unclear whether a generaltrend can be claimed in either direction.The above theories, while some of the more commonly mentioned, are by no means a completelist. For example, other authors have suggested that insecure land tenure encouragesunsustainable land use, including deforestation (Wunder, 2000); that poverty in and of itself is adriver of deforestation (Minde et al., 2001; Fisher, 2004); and that decisions about the use oftrees can only be understood in the context of cultural and gendered power relations (Rocheleau,1995). No single explanation is likely to be sufficient in any given case.Fairhead and Leach (1998) introduced a new element into the debate by claiming that in WestAfrica, native people often helped to maintain tree cover, or even planted trees where there hadbeen none before. However, these instances of stewardship had been ignored due to colonialists’preconceptions of Africans as environmentally destructive. Fairhead and Leach contend thatdeforestation statistics in West Africa have been exaggerated by three times or more. It is worthkeeping this in mind when considering any instance of deforestation, though lack of data usuallymakes it impossible to describe any area’s land-use history definitively.We now turn to a closer examination of Malawi itself, in an attempt to determine whether any ofthese existing ideas accurately describe Malawi’s forest loss. Before exploring deforestation indetail, it will be helpful to briefly review some key facts about the country and its population.-4-
History and backgroundMalawi is a small landlocked country in southeastern Africa (Figure 3). Its dominantgeographical feature is Lake Malawi, nearly as large as Malawi itself. Despite its tropicallatitude, Malawi’s location on an inland plateau gives it moderate temperature and rainfall. Thenorthern region is mountainous, while the south is more densely populated; ethnic groups andlanguages also vary greatly from north to south. Table 1 summarizes Malawi’s geography.A brief history of MalawiDue to its remoteness and susceptibilityto malaria, Malawi was never as heavilysettled by Europeans as were many otherAfrican colonies. In 1891 it becameNyasaland Protectorate, administered bythe British. During its colonial yearsNyasaland served as an important sourceof labor for the mines and plantations inRhodesia and other neighboringcountries, perhaps at the expense of itsown economic development (Vaughan,1987; Mkandawire, 1999).After independence in 1964, Malawi wasruled for 30 years by “President for Life”Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, effectivelyFigure 3. Map of Malawi and region.a dictator. Under his leadership,Malawi’s agricultural estates and otherbusiness interests were well supported,but conditions did not improve for ordinary Malawians (Ellis et al., 2003). Banda stepped downpeacefully in 1994, and today Malawi is a multi-party democracy2, albeit struggling withallegations of government corruption.Though Malawi itself has not experienced a war in recent history, it has been significantlyaffected by the long-standing civil war in neighboring Mozambique. This war disruptedtransport and economic stability across the whole region, and caused a flux of over one millionrefugees into Malawi (GoM, 2001), many of whom stayed on after the 1994 peace treaty.Agriculture in MalawiAgriculture in Malawi can be summed up in two words: maize and tobacco. Maize isoverwhelmingly the dominant food crop; about 80% of Malawi’s arable land area is planted tomaize (Smale, 1995). Tobacco, the main cash crop, accounts for most of the rest. There aresmall amounts of cassava, rice, and bananas for subsistence, as well as tea, sugar, cotton, andgroundnuts for income, but these play only a minor role.2Malawi’s transition to democracy was precipitated by foreign aid donors, who demanded a change in governmentin return for continuing aid (GoM, 2001).-5-
Under colonial rule, much of Malawi’s best agricultural land was set aside for tobacco estates,and smallholders were legally prohibited from growing tobacco and other cash crops. Not until1990 was this system was finally overturned in order to comply with a World Bank creditscheme (Orr, 2000). Since then, smallholder production of cash crops has greatly increased(Harrigan, 2003), but maize production is still the overriding concern of Malawian farmers.Malawi’s agriculture is low-input and low-output. Nearly all cropland is rain-fed; despite theabundance of fresh water in Lake Malawi, irrigation schemes are too costly (Mkandawire, 1999).This leaves farmers susceptible to drought during the eight-month dry season. Furthermore, mostsmallholders cannot afford fertilizer and other inputs. The cost of nitrogen fertilizer in Malawi isapproximately five times the world average (Dewees, 1995), in part due to high transport costs(Harrigan, 2003). These and other factors have led to Malawi missing out on the “GreenRevolution” (Dorward and Kydd, 2004), even more so than other African nations; average maizeyields in Malawi are only about 1 ton per hectare (Mwafongo and Kapila, 1999)3.Malawi’s economyBy any standards, Malawi is a desperately poor country, with a per-capita GDP among thelowest in the world (Table 1). Malawi’s internal economy is almost entirely non-monetized.Employment is difficult to measure, as approximately 80% of the population is employed inTable 1. Geography and economy of Malawi.GeographyEconomyLand area1118,480 km2 (of which 24,400 km2is Lake Malawi)Currency(May 2005)Kwacha (US 1.00 K118)Annual rainfall75 cm (SW) to 180 cm (N)GDP 2 1.9 billion (2002)Average annualtemperature16 C (plateau) to 25 C (lowland)Per capitaGDP1,2 190 ( 580 PPP)Shared bordersZambia (NW), Mozambique (SWand SE), Tanzania (NE)Aid received(2002)2 377 millionColonial historyIndependence from Britain, 1964Foreign debt1 3.13 billion2GovernmentDemocratic republic, as of 1994Debt serviceLanguagesEnglish (official), Chichewa(official), regional languagesExports1 503 million(tobacco, tea)Religions1Christianity (75%), Islam (20%),other (5%)Imports1% urban pop.216%; growing at 0.3% per year 521 million (food,manufactured goods,petroleum)Incomedistribution2Highly unequal(Gini coefficient 0.503)Major cities3Blantyre (646,000); Lilongwe(capital, 598,000); Mzuzu(120,000); Zomba (90,000) 36 million (2002)Sources: 1CIA (2005), 2UNDP (2004), 3Brinkhoff (2003). Currency values in current US dollars.3By comparison, average maize yields in the United States are approximately 8 tons per hectare.-6-
subsistence agriculture (GoM, 2001). Poor infrastructure, lack of information, and governmentdisincentives have discouraged the development of internal trade (Dorward and Kydd, 2004),and this poses a formidable barrier to poverty reduction (Ellis et al., 2003).Malawi’s economy has been profoundly shaped by the agricultural estate system and its effectson land distribution. Poor Malawians often forgo working on their own land (if they have any)to work as laborers for wealthy farmers or estate owners. This agricultural wage labor, or ganyu,is a crucial source of livelihood for much of the population (Dorward and Kydd, 2004). Unequalland distribution has contributed to Malawi’s extraordinarily unequal distribution of income,which in turn causes low “growth elasticity”: when the economy grows by 1%, poverty isreduced by much less than 1% (Mkandawire, 1999).Malawi has the dubious honor of being the most tobacco-dependent economy in the world(Tobin and Knausenberger, 1998). Tobacco accounts for about 70% of the country’s exportrevenues (Figure 4) and directly or indirectly employs over half the population4. There areseveral reasons for the continuing dominance of tobacco: it is ideally suited to Malawi’s climate,has high labor and low land requirements, and has built up a great deal of infrastructure andpolitical support (Yurekli and de Beyer, 2001; Shorter, 2002). However, as anti-smokingcampaigns attempt to reduce tobacco demand, diversification seems increasingly necessary.Other options for Malawi are limited. Lack of suitable land has prevented Malawi fromincreasing production of tea, its other main cash crop; an alternative might be to focus onespecially high-value crops such as paprika, garlic, or cut flowers (Dorward and Kydd, 2004;WAC, 2004; Shorter, 2002). To develop Malawi’s currently insignificant manufacturingindustries, such as textiles, would require major investments in infrastructure and a solution tohigh transport costs (GoM, 2001). Perhaps a better opportunity would be the promotion oftourism, which currently cannot even be measured as part of Malawi’s GDP (GoM, 2001).However, there seems to be no near-term alternative to tobacco as a source of export revenue.Foreign aid provides a significant boost to Malawi’seconomy, accounting for about 20% of GDP in 2002(UNDP, 2004). However, aid payments are beingcurtailed due to donor concern over governmentcorruption (Dorward and Kydd, 2004). Malawi is alsoheavily burdened with foreign debt; during the 1990s, itsannual debt payments exceeded 25% of its GDP (UNDP,2004). A succession of structural adjustment programsin the 1980s and 1990s have done little to reduce thatdebt. Flotation and subsequent devaluation of thekwacha in the mid-1990s have only worsened matters(Tsoka and Mvula, 1999).To say Malawi’s economic situation is precarious wouldbe an understatement. Paradoxically, the resulting4Figure 4. Malawi’s majorexports (% share of total), 19911997.Source: Government of Malawi (2001).Nevertheless, since Malawi is a small country, it accounts for only about 5% of world tobacco exports (Yurekli andde Beyer, 2001), and is a “price-taker” in the global tobacco trade (GoM, 2001).-7-
poverty probably contributes to Malawi’s population growth, as described below.Demographics of MalawiMost other African countries seem to be undergoing a significant fertility decline (Cohen, 1998),but Malawi is not among them. Its birth and death statistics point to a country early in Stage II ofthe demographic transition (Table 2). Malawi’s population increase began in the 1930s as majordiseases like smallpox were brought under control (Vaughan, 1987), and although both death andbirth rates are still high, death rates have fallen enough to enable rapid population growth – over3% per year, among the world’s highest.No single factor can be invoked toexplain Malawi’s high fertilityrates. However, as might beexpected, Malawi scores poorly onmost measures of gender equality,ranking 134th out of 144 nationsmeasured (UNDP, 2004). Girlsare underrepresented in school andtend to marry early (Cohen, 2000).Education and employmentopportunities are very limited forwomen in Malawi, 68% of whomcannot read or write (GoM, 2001).Because Malawi’s population ismostly rural5, the majority ofMalawian women are employed inf
Jan 21, 2005 · This paper will attempt to unravel some of the causes, with the goal of identifying short-term and long-term solutions. The central question: Does population growth cause deforestation? Malawi has one of the highest rates
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1 Malawi profile 5 1.1 Country profile 5 1.2 Key facts & figures 5 2 Investing in Malawi 6 2.1 Overview 6 2.2 Specific investment incentives 7 2.3 Risk assessment 9 3 Key sectors 11 4 Investment prospects 13 4.1 Introduction 13 4.2 Summary table of all prospects 13 5 Next steps 59 5.1 Investment forum in Malawi 59
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Name: Dr Bernadette O’Hare Title: Senior Lecturer in Child Health, College of Medicine, University of Malawi, Malawi Present position and institution: Lecturer in Child Health, College of Medicine, University of Malawi, Malawi Previous position and institution: [As at the time of the child’s death]
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ner, Gladys Thomas, Charles McKinney, Mary Pelfrey, Christine Qualls, Dora Turner, David Petry, Cleone Gor don, Dorothy Scruggs, Phyllis Rice, Jacquelyn White, Rowena Napier, William Smith, Annie Smith, Ruth Ann Workman, Barbara Johnson and Letha Esque. The awards were presented by MU President Robert B. Hayes on March 4. Faculty meet Tuesday A general faculty meeting has been scheduled for .
