Four of the country’s top environmentalists on the 11^th of April 2019 holistically joined forces in glorifying the roles forests and trees have in building climate change resilience in the country. In a panel discussion aired live on Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS) and organised by the Association of Environmental Journalists, panelists tackled drumming contemporary issues facing the country due to forest depletion.

Director of Forestry, Stella Gama; Chief Disaster Risk Mitigation Officer, Dr. Stern Kita; Deputy Chief of Party for the USAID/Malawi-funded Protecting Ecosystems and Restoring Forests in Malawi (PERFORM) project, Blessings Mwale; and Program Officer at the Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocaciy (CEPA), Gloria Kamoto shared discussed the topic of trees, forests and resilience.

While responding to questions from listeners, Gama reported that more than 96% of Malawi’s 17.6 million people population  depend on wood fuels for household cooking and heating. She lamented current forest replenishment trends saying the country’s forests are being cut and degraded at such an alarming rate that they are not being given a chance to regenerate.

“We are losing more than what we are bringing back into our forests. As the country, we are losing 10,000-20,000 hectares of forest land annually, which is a worrisome development,” she said.

Other topics discussed included, international coordination on fighting illegal forest businesses as well as legal charcoal production processes in which the Director of Forestry highlighted availability of sustainable forests as the main controlling factor for the award of the much-needed sustainable charcoal production license.

Backing on Mwale’s comment on people’s hand in the dwindling forests,  Dr. Kita blamed the lack of ownership syndrome by citizens as the main contributing factor for the current worrisome trends. According to Kita, many people take forests as the governments’ resource and misuse the resource despite forests being a necessity for daily household livelihoods. He further warned against the continued occurrence of adverse climatic conditions including persistent dry spells, pest and disease outbreak as well as floods for years if current forest depletion trends continue to prevail.

The activity was part of 5^th Annual Assembly of Science and Environmental Journalists in Malawi held at Victoria Hotel in Blantyre under the theme Greening the Media for a Resilient Malawi.

By Gift Chimulu