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These days as the world spends sleepless nights, worrying about climatic change and its attendant natural calamities due to global warming, we seem to be very much at peace with ourselves, looking at environmental degradation as their problem.
We talk loudly about HIV and Aids, gender violence, agriculture and politics but if at all there is any noise on environmental degradation, then its in inaudible whispers, the kind of tone lovers will use while on a picnic and not when you want to wake up a neighbour sleeping in a house that has caught fire as is the case with us, Malawians.
I know there are NGOs out there working with rural communities to maintain a balance between people and nature for our own survival but their numbers are insignificant when compared with the enormity of the challenge they face.
As for government, there must be a whole ministry responsible for the environment but God knows what it is doing to protect the green that characterised the looks of Mother Malawi. I’m reliably informed that the acreage of trees felled in a year for nkhuni (fuelwood), matabwa (timber) and makala (charcoal) hasn’t decreased. Some say, it is steadily increasing. What is indisputable is that our consumption of trees is unsustainable.
Of course, the signs of depletion are there for all to see. If you are in Blantyre just go and see how naked is the supposedly protected catchment area of the Mudi Dam which stores water for the city, the commercial capital of Malawi. There are gardens from the gate of Blantyre Water Board offices, all the way to the top of Soche Mountain.
In Mulanje, I hear from volunteers who try to conserve the Mulanje cedar—a pest resistant hardwood unique to the mountain—that they are fighting a losing battle against people who, lulled by good money cedar logs fetch on the market, risk their lives by going up the mountain in the night to harvest for their personal benefit that natural heritage that belongs to us all.
Other types of trees found there—planted or natural—are also wantonly cut down, laying bare the source of many rivers which supply fresh life-sustaining water to the populous Mulanje, Phalombe and Thyolo districts as well as part of the Lower Shire.
I’m told trees on the Zomba Mountain, source of the Mulunguzi River which waters the old capital city now turned into a university town, are also disappearing as fast as on the Mulanje Mountain. Probably the only difference is that those cutting the trees for sale in Zomba have a licence and government earns tax revenue from the blooming timber business there.
The Shire—which waters life and the economy, providing the source of the hydroelectric power the whole country depends on—is now changing course, having its banks widening, carrying mud, namasupuni and other impurities as natural trees which God “planted” on its banks are wantonly cut down and burnt into charcoal which is ever on demand in the urban areas.
But the disappearance of natural trees along the part of Thuchila River that waters life in my home village, situated to the north eastern side of Nkando Trading Centre in Mulanje, strikes me as a personal loss. In my life time, I’ve seen Thuchila changing from an all-season to a completely dry river that only floods after it has rained heavily upstream.
In those days, Thuchila’s cool, fresh deep waters were shielded by a variety of natural trees like mkundi, mphudzo (also known by folks at home as mphimbinyoro) and mbvunguti. Today, there’s hardly a single natural tree on the banks of the river where I learned how to swim. Instead, people are growing a type of tobacco locally known as rabu right on the river bed.
Isn’t it ironic that my illiterate ancestors conserved Thuchila for a generation of literate brats that has permanently destroyed the river? I recall the wanton cutting down of trees along the Thuchila River coincided with the introduction of rural pipe-water project in the 70s and 80s. Now taps hardly spit a drop of water and Thuchila is virtually gone.
Yet, while all this destruction is still going on, I’ve hardly heard a voice of any leader urging people to take advantage of the current rainy season to plant trees. No tree planting campaign when we can’t do without trees, really?
At least Kamuzu Banda introduced the National Tree Planting Day. It helped sensitise Malawians on the need to plant trees to replace those they cut down.
Now the National Tree Planting Day seems to be buried together with Youth Week and self-help. It seems even the government regards wanton cutting down of trees as our inalienable right. If not, the Ministry responsible for the Environment should wake up and ensure that people replace the tree they cut down recklessly like army worms.
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