Page 17 - 2020 SoM Journal Vol 73 No 1 FINAL_Neat

Deforestation, Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture 9

focused around the Blantyre-Limbe township. Indeed, the township was
increasingly taking on the trappings and status of a "city".
Articles and reports thus began appearing in the local newspapers with
such headlines as "Rate of Deforestation Alarming" or "The Shadow of
Deforestation looms over Malawi". In response the President, Kamuzu Banda,
began exhorting people to "Plant More Trees" and a National Tree Planting Day
was introduced.
The reason for the deforestation of the Shire Highland landscape is
usually attributed to population increase and to the subsequent expansion of
agricultural land although most of the deforestation took place on the hills and
mountains of the highlands many of which were designated forest reserves. An
intrinsic relationship was also seen between poverty (due to limited land
holdings) and the depletion of the woodland - along with its resources. As
Raphael Mweninguwe (2001) expressed it: “women experiencing poverty cut
down trees for firewood, which they then sell in the local market in order to ‘find
money’ to buy the basic necessities of life - food.”
The reasons for the deforestation of the Shire Highlands are complex and
multifaceted, and a key factor is the high cost of electricity and paraffin in the
urban context, thereby making charcoal the main source of energy for cooking
purposes among urban dwellers.
In the newspaper articles a nostalgia is often expressed for a past Eden
when "lush green forests" covered much of the landscape, and resources like
fungi and firewood were plentiful: in contrast to the present decade when there is
nothing but bleached soil "devoid of any vegetation". Mweninguwe even raised
the question: "Will Malawi turn into a desert?" A little exaggerated, perhaps, but
expressing a real concern in regard to the economic and social costs of the
deforestation of the landscape.
Thus, even thirty years ago foresters like Mweninguwe and
Solomon Chipompha were expressing their concerns regarding the
deforestation of the landscape and emphasizing that there was a real need
for a re-afforestation programme (Daily Times August 1990).
Some observers felt that the Malawi government, hampered by the
World Bank, lacked any "political will" either in conserving the remaining
indigenous forests or in implementing the needed re-afforestation
programme. (Sibale 2001). Although, in fact, the Malawi government,
supported by a Norwegian development agency, initiated in the 1980's
the Blantyre Fuelwood Project which involved the large-scale planting
of blue gums on the Blantyre-Chikwawa escarpment. (Noble et al 1988).
Local herbalists, however, only too aware of a decline in the
availability of plant medicines through deforestation, were critical of the
government's National Forestry programme (1996) which tended to view
re-afforestation as implying the establishment of pine and blue gum