Environmental Management, Conservation and Natural Hazards
Ecosystems and pressures
Ecosystems provide goods and services. Malawi faces deforestation from charcoal and agricultural clearance, soil erosion, water pollution, wildlife loss and solid waste problems. Climate change brings more intense rainfall and longer droughts.
Conservation
Instruments include national parks such as Nyika, Kasungu and Liwonde, game reserves, forest reserves, community-based natural resource management, wildlife corridors, reafforestation and bans on illegal logging and charcoal.
Hazards and management
Floods in the Lower Shire (Cyclone Idai in 2019, Cyclone Freddy in 2023), droughts, landslides on steep slopes and earthquakes along the rift are the main hazards. Management includes early warning, land-use zoning, afforestation, terracing, flood embankments, disaster preparedness and relief.
Worked example
Assess flood risk in the Lower Shire. Reasoning: low relief, the Shire–Ruo confluence, heavy cyclonic rain, siltation, catchment deforestation and dense settlement on the floodplain all raise risk; embankments and early warning reduce it. Physical and human causes must both appear.
Traps
Treating a hazard as a disaster (a hazard becomes a disaster only when it harms people); confusing mitigation with adaptation; confusing conservation with preservation; blaming a single factor.