Mangochi District Council and Community Initiative for Self Reliance (Ciser) have signed a Forest Management Agreement with 12 village natural resources management committees from three traditional authorities (T/As) to restore forests.
The T/As are Makanjira, Namabvi and Lulanga. The agreement follows droughts and floods which accur almost every year due to effects of climate change caused by careless cutting down of trees. The situation has also led to the depletion of rare species of fish such as chambo due to siltation which negatively affects the breeding of fish. Speaking in an interview on Saturday during the signing ceremony at Mpilipili Primary School ground in T/A Makanjira, Mangochi district environmental officer Bruno Kamanga said the agreement will empower communities to engage in forest rejuvenation and conservation initiatives. “Communitites will now take trees as their own and this will protect our forests and mitigate the effects of climate change,” he said. On his part, Ciser executive director Joseph Makwakwa said deforestation has negatively affected his organisation’s mission of building community resilience, especially on the fish project: “hence, this agreement is essential and could not have come at a better time then this.”
T/A Makanjira hailed the district council and Ciser for the initiative and pledged to deal with people who destroy forests.
(Source: The Nation Malawi, Tuesday, 29 January 2019)