Making Malawi Green through Afforestation: A Need for More Coordination

Bluegum Woodlot in Kamgulitse Village, Bembeke, TA Kamenyagwaza,
 Dedza. Part of forest I have maintained over the years.

The environment has fascinated me from an early age, with an interest in trees and their role in preventing environmental degradation. This is right from when I was in primary school at Tsokamkanansi LEA where we would be assigned various extra curricular activities such as watering flower gardens before starting classes for the day. At the time I more or less was going about the activities more as a robot programmed to do the task;  one watering cane, I am done, and then jump into class. As the years progressed from standard 1 to standard 2, the day 21 January, which was then designated tree planting day was announced during the morning assembly by the head teacher then; that it will be tree planting day and as a school we would participate. I was excited, because I knew, "no classes" that day, although I wouldn't say it to my mum who was a primary school teacher there too. But I kept asking her, when 21 January will be so that I could make plans with my friends to play to our hearts content driving wire cars and playing "kick the tin", a variation of hide and seek. 21st January finally dawned, and we were ushered in some sort of order to a nearby area, opposite Tsokamkanansi LEA School to start the planting. Thinking of the plans I had made with my friends to play the day out, it was really an anxious time for me as men in black suits kept making speeches, about planting trees and why it is necessary. When the speeches came to an end, the planting started, but the gentleman who made the first speech had to plant the first tree, water and then everyone had to clap hands. I said, I can do that too, why should we clap hands? Well, then it was hooray, free for all, let the planting begin. Well, as kids we naturally made a game out of the process and started asking each other as we were planting, "iwe wadzala ingati?", - "how many have you planted", in an attempt to out-plant your friends. We soon lost count, as the trees were finished and everyone was now scrambling to head back home. About 2 years later, at that time,  there was what was called, "youth week", we were asked to go and weed the forest, using slashers. It was pretty light work, despite the sense that we were getting at that time, that it was the only option. I was however convinced from this early stage that trees are necessary part of the environment and that public institutions wanted to educate the public on this message. This message is promoted nowadays by public institutions, however, the emerging theme has been that planting is only the beginning in sustaining a tree that takes over 15 years to harvest. The message however, that trees are important seems to have sunk in many peoples minds now with various natural disasters and failings of infrastructure that may be attributed to trees that have been harvested without replanting new ones. However, this 15 year, time seems to be achieved immediately after planting the trees as there seems limited follow up in making sure that the trees mitigate the current challenges. Some people, have diminished the value of planting trees as futile, because no-one follows up. Well maybe it is a strategy with the hope, that "some will survive" and eventually we shall have trees. As one writer, said, "hope is not a strategy", there is need for some level of organization. First, people have realized that planting trees is important. This is good. Then the next question, is how is the planting being done? Have the areas for afforestation been marked out? Who is monitoring the progress? And many other questions that may be posed. Well, my thoughts on the planting is to have a coordinated process that is controlled by a central office(Should be Forestry department). Well, this might already be there, however, the approach that organizations or individuals of goodwill conduct afforestation efforts is suggestive that there is lack of clarity on who initiates the planting. Therefore, the institutions should consider the following steps:

1) Actively map out the target areas for afforestation and share these with the public - the public are already enthusiastic of afforestation, show them where to plant trees. Use the modeling knowledge created from works like these on modeling Dzalanyama forest by K. Munthali.

2)  Coordinate the energy just as done in the tree planting weeks; have some people that have the goodwill to plant, to actually actively create fire breaks and other interventions to ensure that the trees grow.

3)  Mobilize competitions that could support afforestation, for example learning from the campaign of Make Malawi green with Calrsberg green, which in my view was one of the development focussed promotions ever done than some current promotions that I think could have wider developmental impact; but target individuals - consider distributing that mega prize to many people and making your product meaningful.

4)  Monitor progress being made, evaluate and give feedback. Take advantage of the knowledge created by experts in this field (a search on google scholar "Afforestation in Malawi" gives over 4,000 peer reviewed articles), implement the recommendations at scale in key affected areas. Build a learning system for afforestation that will avert these manageable issues of siltation, flooding with distal effects on some key infrastructure.

The experiences, in primary school, revealed, some sort of coordination and energized the zeal for environmental conservation in me and surely some of my friends. In retrospect, the follow up actions (youth week), and the active planning (public officials brought in the seedlings and gave guidance) demonstrated some coordination. The use of us, primary school kids, with malleable brains, well some exploitation maybe but also opportunistic from another angle - using positive youth energy, instead of going to drive my wire toy cars until my heart's content, plant some trees then go and play. The meaningful, promotions of make Malawi green with Calrsberg Green, provided me with realization, that I could take bottle tops exchange them with tree seedlings at my village forestry office and plant them at my family woodlot; a practice I maintained after the promotion, from my pocket money in Secondary school and University. Well, my experience is definitely not unique and could be useful today too. But the model done followed, while in primary school could form a basis for addressing the "follow-up" challenge of ensuring that the trees survive. More effectively though could be the suggested steps in this blog. Hope is not a strategy, let's have a plan and coordinate the current goodwill.