Malawi’s forests are vanishing, victims of the world’s taste for cigarettes and the eternal search by local people for wood for cooking and heating.
The small country holds Southern Africa’s melancholy record for deforestation: 2,8% of the forest cover vanishes each year, experts say.
“We have to react, now,” said Daulos Mauambeta, director of the nation’s society for the protection of wildlife and the environment, one of the signatories of a letter sent to the government in February urging it to halt the destruction of woodlands.
Between 1972 and 1992, he says, Malawi lost 2,5-million hectares of natural and cultivated forest.
The government admits it has a battle on its hands to save the trees that produce the ebony, which transformed into souvenirs, leaves in the suitcases of tourists.
Mahogany and the national tree, the Mulanje cedar, are also menaced.
“Malawi could lose its battle against deforestation if no serious action is taken,” said Sabina Manda, an expert working at the ministry of mines, resources and the environment.
“Trees are chopped down to make charcoal and provide firewood by local people who cannot afford electricity.”
Of Malawi’s 12-million people only eight percent have electricity at home and 60% live below the poverty level.
“Most of the seven forest reserves in the south have been devastated,” said Manda.
Every year some 50 000ha of forest go up in smoke, as trees are turned into charcoal for cooking and heating, said Mauambeta.
Those at Mwanza and Liwonde in the south near the border with Mozambique are thinned out by local farmers who clear the land for their crops.
Tobacco, which accounts for 70% of the country’s foreign exchange, is another factor.
Each year more than 40 000 tonnes of leaves are treated and each tonne requires large quantities of wood for the curing process.
“There are indeed deforestation problems with the tobacco industry, but we are taking action,” said Felix Mkumba, executive secretary of the Malawi Tobacco Association (Tama).
Tama hands out every year thousands of saplings to farmers, but, says Mkumba, small producers concentrate on subsistence crops rather than planting trees.
Tobacco-grower Mailosi Phiri said that local people were aware of the dangers of deforestation but were too poor to give priority to the environment over their own survival.
“The government should stop criticising us for deforesting and suggest solutions for us to survive without cutting down trees,” said Phiri, who farms in Zombia, 70km from the economic capital Blantyre.
Mauambeta says the government should draw up a special planting programme.
Environmentalist bodies want the manufacture of charcoal banned and alternative energy sources developed.
Malawi plants each year about 30-million trees, but, said Manda,”most … do not survive because people do not know how to take care of them.” – AFP