Being an ecologist, working on a climate adaption program in Africa, isn’t that a bit out of my league? Well, ecology and climate in fact have a lot to do with each other. Especially in countries like Malawi. Contrary to what many people think, I am not here to solve the problem of global climate change. Or even the consequences of global climate change in Malawi. Malawi has a more urgent problem than global climate change: land degradation in combination with the natural extreme climate. 
 
Malawians have been cutting down forest for agricultural purposes, collecting firewood, and burning charcoal and for timber for decades, if not centuries. As a result the country that once was covered with tropical forest and a few patches of savanna, with a huge diversity in wildlife like antelopes, elephants and small mammals, and that once was a paradise for birds, became a dry, hot and cultivated country. Malawi is turning into a desert. Global climate
change may contribute to the problem. The  increase in temperatures in South-East Africa does not make it easier for the Malawians to cope with their problems. But the local climate is changing largely as a consequence of land degradation due to their own land use.
 
Now what has an ecologist to do with that? The WATERS-project is trying to tackle the problem using the Ecosystem Service Approach (ESAp). Those following my blogs have probably heard me use this term before. But what is it exactly?
 
ESAp is based on the principle that a healthy ecosystem offers all kinds of services needed for climate regulation, sequestration, purification, food, pharmaceuticals, religious or cultural services etc. In Malawi’s case,  a healthy, self-sustaining ecosystem will also buffer extreme weather conditions and regulate the local climate. Not only because the climate problems in Malawi started by destroying the ecosystem (deforestation) in the first place, but nature itself has many ways of solving environmental problems. Tree roots hold soil and prevent soil erosion, reeds and grasses help stabilize riverbanks, trees and shrubs keep the soil moist and prevent the drying out of the soil, vegetation slows down running water, and so on. 

The government in Malawi consists of different offices, each concerning its own business. For example a forestry office, environmental office, agricultural office, water office, irrigation office, wildlife and parks office, and so on. These offices barely cooperate with each other and stick to their own specialty. One of the goals of ESAp is to teach officers, NGO’s and locals to work across boundaries. ESAp makes it possible to look at challenges beyond the
office’s specific expertise, and to see connections between water, trees and agriculture. Which seems pretty obvious, but in practice is quite hard to establish. Because it not only concerns connections between ‘green’ offices, but
also with health, infrastructure, poverty, HIV, and all the other offices. ESAp helps office workers to understand the source of a problem, even if that is in a completely different area of expertise than theirs. It shows the importance of
Malawian nature. For example, people who are not educated and live in poverty are eager to cut down more trees and to have more agricultural land so that they have more crops en wood to sell. It’s a downward spiral in which poverty contributes to deforestation, which leads to degradation of land, which leads to poverty, etc.. The infrastructure gets destroyed by flash floods, caused by the cutting down of trees. This hampers local people to reach hospitals, markets or schools. Diseases, illiteracy, HIV and bad infrastructure contribute to poverty and vice versa. Or the summarize it; Poverty and development is extremely complex to solve.
 
ESAp is a tool  for solving cross-boundary problems and for stimulating cooperation. It perceives land as an ecosystem, holistically, instead of just trees, just a river, just a village. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that restoring nature in Malawi will solve all the country’s problems. It is way more complicated than that. But it
could contribute to the solution of some of the major problems Malawi is struggling with.
 
Because deforestation is one of the biggest issues in Malawi, I’m focusing mainly on teaching local communities and officers about the importance of managing and conserving forests, also with regard to other issues like infrastructure, food security and health. I tell them that managing a forest is more than just planting trees. To have a healthy forest you need a healthy catchment area, wildlife, shrubs and other plants. You need a stable ecosystem. And it is not necessary for the people to leave the area. With the right use and management they can live with and in the forest. When they make use of conservation agriculture, and agro-forestry in particular, they can use their land more efficiently and more sustainably.  They can use the forest for bee-keeping and the collection of firewood, medicines and wild fruits. But before that, we first need to restore Malawians’ nature. And that is a huge challenge. 

After 8 months of living and birding in Malawi I do have a few thousand bird pictures. Don't ask how many exactly, I'm not going to count them. To give you a impression of the birds flying around here I decided to post a few of
them. Some of these photos are taking in the national parks, but a lot of them just around my house or on the road. I'm no photographer, not all pictures are top-quality. And a real photographer could probably do a way better job. Bit still I like watching birds and I like taking pictures of them. Sometimes with a little bit more success then other times. In this blog I posted a few of these photographs. Some because I like the photo, but some photo's just because I like the bird. But first a short story on my experiences in birdwatching in Malawi.

Birding in Malawi is a quite different  experience than back home in the Netherlands. It is a bit more challenging and  way more exciting. During birdwatching in the National Parks you also have to keep an eye out for elephants, buffalos, hippo’s, crocodiles and smaller animals like snakes, especially pofadder. The most likely time to encounter those are early morning and early evening. The same time you want to go out and watch birds. And believe me looking for a bird and at the same time keeping an eye on your surroundings to be sure you don’t walk into an elephant or hippo is quite distracting. In Nkhotakota National Park I had such an encounter. I was standing
on a low platform over an almost dry river. In the bush next to the platform was a small bird, which I did not recognize. But, as small birds often do, it just would not sit still so I could get a proper look at it. While trying to get the bird properly into my view through my binoculars I forgot looking around me. And, to be honest, standing on a
platform I did feel quite safe, until I heard some rustling of leaves next to me. But, being occupied by the bird, I did not respond immediately. But the noise was not stopping, it came closer. The moment I looked aside I saw a full grown angry elephant, flapping ears and slapping trunk and all, coming at me! And he was just 25 meters away from me! My first thought? Stupid elephant, my bird!!! But after a very short moment of thinking I did
decided to get out of the platform and find refugee behind the bushes on safe ground. I never found the bird again. Which still makes me cranky, because I think it was a lovely bird and I never saw it again.
   
Not only animals make birding a bit challenging. Also the Malawian people can seriously drive me crazy. Here is a
‘normal’ encounter with a Malawian when I go birding in my home town Nsanje. I’m standing at a bush, trying to find the bird in the leaves. A man comes to me. 
“hello Madam, How are you, madam?” 
“Fine, how are you?” 
“Fine madam, thank you madam”
“What are you doing madam?”
“I’m watching birds”
“Why madam”
“Because I like birds”
“Why do you like birds madam”
“I think they are beautiful animals, I  like watching them”
“Oh. What is that madam?”
“A binocular”
“Oh. You make pictures with that madam?”
“No I can see the birds more close”
“Oh. Where are you from madam”
“To be honest I don’t want to have a conversation right know, I really want to look at the birds.”
“I’m sorry madam, I didn’t want to offend you madam, really sorry madam, forgive me madam”
“It’s oke, have a nice day”
“Oke madam, but I know good place with birds madam, you come with me madam”
“No, I’m fine here”
“No madam, come with me madam”
“Could you please leave” (getting annoyed)
“I’m sorry madam, I didn’t want to offend you madam, really sorry madam, forgive me madam”
  “….”
“Oke, I’m leaving now madam”
“…..”
“Can I have your phone number madam”
“No”
“Why not, madam?”
“Just go”
“Oh. Where do you live  madam”
“….”
“Are you married madam?”
“Just go away now please!!!!”
“Oke… Good day madam”
“I’m looking for a wife madam….”
“Go away now!!!!”
By now, the bird decided to go somewhere else.

10 minutes later I thought to find peace again, but 1 kid saw me walking and started yelling: “Hello, good morning, 
how-are-you!!!!” I tried to keep it off with just a simple wave (ignoring only makes it worse). But other kids heard it and come running at me. Yelling: “Give me my money/bottle/sweet!” By now I give up and go home. Followed by a herd of noisy kids. Good morning. Nice morning of bird watching….
 
Not every time I go out it is this way.  Sometimes  the people do leave me alone and I can relatively walk around in peace. To be honest, by now I do know the places where I can be, without being bothered too much. And you would think that after 8 months people would get used to me walking around. But seriously, every time they act like it’s the first time they see me. Sometimes it is funny. You have great conversations or encounter a Malawian who is truly interested in what you are doing. But at other times you just want to be left at peace and Malawian people really do not understand that. Things like privacy and alone time they are not familiar with it. Well, this is Malawi and after all, the birds in Malawi are beautiful and there are quite a lot of them! And I have the pictures to proof that. 

Last week I had a little change in profession. Instead of advisor and coordinator I became a teacher. Together with colleagues Monti from Forestry and Zidane from Wildlife and Parks we went to four secondary school to give lessons about environmental issues. I was lecturing about the effects of deforestation and wrong land-use in Malawi. The kids (ages 13-17) were all members of environmental or wildlife clubs and came to the lessons voluntary. In two days we gave four lectures on four schools. We reached a total of 132 students. And we are not planning to quite after these two days. More will follow!

Another article about WATERS in the media. This time in the Nation, a national newspaper. The article is about workshops we are doing with the local committees from the four districts (Karonga, Salima, Chikwawa and Nsanje) in Zomba. To give the committees  the opportunity to learn from the experience of other committees in the Zomba district. This week the local committees of Karonga and Salima will be in Zomba. My committees (Nsanje) and Chikwawa will go to Zomba from 23rd till 25th of October.  Quite a challenge because we have to travel almost 300 km, while most of the people in the committees haven never been out of Nsanje, most do not of barely speak English, 30% is illiterate and most live isolated without access to internet or even phone. A challenge, but a very nice one!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/By-Nature/367206953303971

It’s time for an update about our achievements in Nsanje. The last few  weeks I spend a lot of time attending and organizing workshops and facilitating workshops. Enjoyable because I love presenting and organizing these kind of activities! And after all, sharing information is the most important part of my task in Nsanje.
 
When I started this project I was warned that the local people often only come to workshops and trainings if they receive money and materials. And that they would not be interested in information and training. After listening to these kinds of stories I was a bit worried about my project. Since the WATERS project is all about information sharing and capacity building, and not about giving away money and materials. But the past few months proved the opposite to me. The local people I am working with are amazing. They are coming to every workshop I organize. They listen, discuss, take notes and ask for more
information. Back in their own villages they pass on the lessons learned to their village members and even write small reports about these gatherings to me. The reports are handwritten and in Chichewa of course, so I need a translator to read them. But the fact they pass on the message to each other is so valuable. It shows to me that they are serious about the project and eager to learn. 
 
The subject we handled during the workshops so far were about climate change, environmental issues, cause and effect, cooperation and the importance of having a balanced ecosystem to reduce climate related hazards. In the future we are planning to continue these subjects and add workshops on taking care of  trees and the writing of management plans.
 
Because I was able to save some of my budget, I decided to use this a bit different than I did all the former workshops. In Nsanje, deforestation is a big problem, and the committees I’m working with have a huge responsibility to fight this. But they barely have proper materials or funding to achieve this. I decided to help them out a bit with some much needed materials. My first approach turned out to be a bit of a disappointment to me. I invited the committees for a meeting and asked them for what purpose they wanted to use the money. Positive outcome was that they all immediately agreed to spend the money to strengthen their tree nurseries. But after that the meeting turned out to be a wakeup call for me. The committees are not used to create plans together and after 2 workshops talking about cooperation they obviously were not ready to take it to this level yet. I was moving to fast for them. At the end of the meeting they had a plan which would cost me 2 million Kwacha (total budget being  300.000, about 900 US dollar). Instead of deciding on basis of priority or current resources of the committees, they all wanted to have exactly the same, no matter what their individual targets were. I was disappointed, but my  colleagues assured me that this was already a huge step for them. Still it made me realize how much work there is to be done and what a huge change of mind set is necessary to make this work.

Eventually my colleague Mr Mwafumu and I spend a day on our motorbikes to make an inventory of all the 14 tree nurseries in my catchment area. What were there targets, which materials do they already have and how many people were active in the committee? With the results of this inventory we decided to buy them basic material like water cans, pails and rakes depending on the targets and available resources of each committee. On the 29th of June we organized another workshop on managing tree nurseries. At the end of the workshop we distributed the materials to the local committees. With these materials, some coaching of the District Council and the enthusiasm of the local committees we can now grow 115.000 trees. These trees will be used for the reforestation of my project area, the Nyamadzere River. This is one of the most vulnerable area’s to flash floods and soil erosion. The planting of trees will be just after the start of the raining season in October/November. And with a little bit of help the committees can use the materials to grow even more trees coming year.

It is a while ago and I almost forgot to mention it on my own site. But in April I wrote a blog for VSO UK about Climate change and Poverty. The blog was especially writen for International Mother Earth Day on request of VSO international.

The theme of 2013 was "The Face of Climate Change". 

"International Mother Earth Day is a chance to reaffirm our collective responsibility to promote harmony with nature at a time when our planet is under threat from climate change, unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and other man-made problems. When we threaten the planet, we undermine our only home – and our future survival. On this International Day, let us renew our pledges to honour and respect Mother Earth."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
Message for the International Mother Earth Day 2013

Read the blog on: http://blogs.vsointernational.org/index.php/2013/04/22/poverty-and-climate-change/

Following the Stakeholders Inception Workshop I organized on the 25th of April the Local Inception Workshop about the WATERS-project. The location of the workshop was in a church in Chididi, up in the hills west of Nsanje boma, within the catchment area of the project area Nyamadezere River. The participants existed of local committees who are cooperating in the project and the Traditional Authorities. Following a photo impression of the day. To enlarge the picture, just click on them.

At the 26th of March was the launch of the WATERS-project in my district Nsanje. We organized a workshop for the officers of the District Council and NGO's working in the field of environment and climate change. Followed by a lunch and a  field visit to the project area Nyamadzere River with the national media: 1 radio station and 2 newspapers. A day (or more couple of days) hard work, but it was a success  Following a couple of pictures to give an impression of this day.

While I’m in Malawi, a huge part of my work will be the coordination of the WATERS-Project (Waters Futures: Towards Equitable Resource Strategies). WATERS is an initiative of VSO and the Scottish Government, which is also funding the project. The goal of the project is to support and train communities in the four most vulnerable districts of Malawi on how to use the benefits of the ecosystem in order to decrease the effects of erratic weather like heavy rain and dry spells. This is done by capacity building and ecosystem service measurements.

The WATERS-project is focused on ten Village Nature Resources Management Committees (VNRMC’s) in each district by training and supporting them in applying an Ecosystem Service Approach (ESAp). Al ten VNRMC’s will be linked together by a mutual threat and will have to work together to mitigate it. The VNRMC’s are registered committees who have a responsibility in their village on nature, agriculture and climate change. The climate change coordinators will support and train the VNRMC’s in different measures, for example:

• The planting of trees;
• on banks of rivers to prevent siltation;
• to prevent erosion and to slow down flashfloods;
• to make soil less vulnerable to dry spells;
• The prevention of deforestation by promoting of alternative energy sources ;
• The promotion of good agricultural methods with a variety of drought tolerant crops;
• Small scale irrigation;
• Usage of marches and wetlands for water storage

As example for the implementation of ESAp in the districts, we make use of the experiences and lessons learned at the Lake Chilwa Basin project in the east of Malawi. In this area the organization LEAD-SEA has been working with ESAp and VNRMC’s with success. To evaluate this project, a VSO-colleague of us, is placed at LEAD-SEA. He is providing us with much needed information on the practical implementation of ESAp. Another source of information is the Scottish James Hutton Institute. They will provide us with the theoretic knowledge about ecosystems and climate change during the whole project.

The four selected vulnerable districts in Malawi are Nsanje, Chikhwawa, Salima and Karonga. In each district VSO has placed 1 climate change coordinator. I’ll be working in Nsanje District in the southern tip of Malawi, the hottest and poorest district of Malawi. The top ten priorities in this district are:
1)      Deforestation
2)      Erosion
3)      Siltation
4)      Flooding
5)      Dry spells
6)      Water quality and quantity (salinity)
7)      Forest fires
8)      Poaching
9)      Water catchment degradation
10)  River bank cultivation

These priorities are causing or amplifying each other and other threats like flash floods, drought, the contamination of (drinking) water, water borne diseases (flooding), the wash away of crops and infrastructure, loss of biodiversity, and shortage of energy sources like fire wood.

My employer is the Council District of Nsanje. This is comparable with a Provincial Government in the Netherlands. Next to the practical implementation of the project we are also linking the Council District with the communities and NGO’s working on climate change related projects in the district and teaching about ecosystem and climate change on schools in the district.

Last but not least a volunteer from VSO is placed at the organization of CISONECC (Civil Society Network on Climate Change) in Malawi. She will organize the communication, promotion, media attention etc. of the WATERS project and the successes made.

The partners of the WATERS-project are:
·         Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO);
·         Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD);
·         Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy (CEPA);
·         LEAD Southern and Eastern Africa (LEAD-SEA);
·         James Hutton Institute (JHI).

The whole project will run from February 2013 until March 2015. I will stay in Nsanje from February 2013 until February 2014. After this period another VSO volunteer will take over.