Each day is always tiresome for 58-year-old widow Lucia Kamchepa in Traditional Authority (T/A) Kuntaja in Blantyre, southern Malawi. As a woman, she works for many hours within her two-bed roomed grass thatched hut she calls home and several kilometers away from it soon after getting up early in the morning but sleeps just for a few hours.
?Every day I have to walk for 5 Km to fetch some water from a well the only source of water for drinking and cooking in my village,? said the mother of 6 and 14 grandchildren adding that sometimes the water source dries up annually during dry season between August and December.
??and apart from fetching water, I also have to walk for another long distance in search for firewood for cooking and lighting,? explained Kamchepa.
Located in Middle Shire, Kuntaja Area is one of the areas where the pains of the impact of climate change are clear in Malawi.
Here, villagers including Kamchepa struggle to access water, firewood and even to produce food in their gardens through agricultural activities because of routine frequent erratic rainfall that lead to droughts resulting from climate change due to previous massive environmental degradation activities such as deforestation and poor land use.
The present experiences however, are just a sign of more problems yet to come ahead since projections indicate that Malawi?s high population growth due to high fertility rate and rampant acts of environmental degradation and climate change are to swallow the country?s natural resources to the extent that accessing them would then be a mountain to climb as they would be inadequate for the population.
In Malawi, like in most sub-Saharan Africa region, women are inferior to men due to gender disparities, and due to some cultural beliefs inherited since time immemorial valuing children as human assets in families, women are turned into like heavily burdened child bearing machines.
Women in this region are expected to bear as many children as they can with a belief that the offsprings will later provide the husband and wife and members of the extended family with social security benefits including food, clothing, shelter and other necessities and even luxuries.
The children have to provide these as a token of appreciation that they exist in the world because of their parents and members of the extended families.
However, this is one of the major same reason, among other things, putting mother?s and children?s health at risk, fueling poverty as well as increasing population beyond governments funded inadequate available social services such as health, education, safe water, energy just but mentioning a few which are mainly donor funded.
In Malawi?s case according to the population projections by the state run National Statistical Office (NSO), the 2012 population in the country stands at 14.8 million but the quality of its life reveals a sad tale.
This is so because according to the NSO 2010/2011 Integrated Household Survey (HIS), one in every two persons in this population lives below the poverty line while one in every four people being in extreme poverty.
UNFPA Population and Development Programme Manager for Malawi Thomas Chataghalala Munthali said one of the major factors contributing to poverty in Malawi is the size of households.
?It?s a fact that household size is one of the key factors affecting the level of household poverty-the 2006 Malawi Poverty and Vulnerability Analysis verifies the point. The short of it, quality of life and poverty levels are highly linked to population size,? he said adding that this is due to Malawi?s high fertility rate.
?Statistics speak for themselves: Current total fertility rate is 5.7 children per woman-one of the highest in the region; Women have their first births at a median age of 18.9 years-so young; 26 percent of teenagers have already begun childbearing-early childbearing; 73 percent of currently married women either want no more children or want to wait at least 2 years before their next child,? explained Munthali.
He further said statistics clearly reveal that women in Malawi demand for a small family size.
?42 percent of married women and 46 percent of sexually active unmarried women are using a modern method-increasing acceptance for family planning methods; 26 percent of married women have unmet need for family planning-clear demand,? explained Munthali.
He added: ?Simply put, if we can meet the demand for family planning by the population, we can begin to address an important component of climate change ?population pressure.?
Munthali emphasized that there is a strong link between population dynamics on one hand and climate change and poverty on the other especially for an agrarian country like Malawi.
?Therefore, tackling one side of the equation would be fighting a losing battle,? he said.
Minus all other factors that are contributing to majority (over 60 per 100 people in Malawi?s population being stuck in the pains of poverty, high fertility rate indeed need urgent attention or the country should brace up for more tough times to emanate from few natural resources against a project population boom ahead.
?Malawi is one of 15 population and climate change hot spots characterized by a high population rate.Rapid population growth places enormous pressure on natural resources such as water, energy and land,? said recently a visiting expert, Roger Mark De Souza Vice President of the Washington DC (US) based Population Action International (PAI) in Lilongwe during the joint launch of a report on Population Dynamics and Climate Change by his organization and the Nairobi (Kenya) based African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEV).
He disclosed that Malawi?s current population density of 126 people per square kilometer is among the highest in Africa.
?The population will grow six-ford to 803 people per square kilometer by 2050.Resource challenges including water, energy and land access are already felt most in the densely populated parts of the southern and central regions of the country,? said De Souza.
He further explained that Malawi will also experience a major shift in the distribution of its population, with the share of its inhabitants living in urban areas doubling from about 16 percent to 32 percent by 2050.
?Currently, two out of three residents live in slum settlements in Malawi, which are characterized by high vulnerability to flooding, poor environmental sanitation and lack of basic social services including water,energy and land,? said De Souza adding,?If not planned for, urbanization could result in increased concentration of poverty in urban areas and frustrate efforts to reduce poverty itself.?
AFIDEP?s Executive Director, Eliya Zulu, a Malawian based in Nairobi, Kenya disclosed that the PAI and AFIDEP joint research had revealed many Climate Change and Environmental Challenges in Malawi based on stakeholder interviews.
He said the challenges include increased water scarcity, unpredictable weather patterns, recurring flooding, recurring droughts, unpredictable start of rainfall, short rainy seasons and prolonged dry spells during rainy season, drying up of rivers and lakes, low fish supplies, excessive temperatures (heat waves), landslides, frequent bush fires, increased prevalence of water borne diseases, low and unstable hydro-electric production, declining flora and fauna, and declining natural species.
?Population dynamics and climate change therefore, states that investments in reproductive health and family planning should be considered among the country?s priority adaptation actions. However, it does not propose a specific project with components of reproductive health and family planning as interventions,? he said.
In a study, ?Population and Reproductive Health in National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) for Climate Change in Africa? Mutunga, C and K Hardee also say inclusion of climate change and population dynamics in Malawi?s development blueprint, the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS II), presents an opportunity for integrating these issues and mainstreaming them in other sectors.
?However, the following challenges need to be overcome: Lack of climate change policy and strategy, fragmentation of climate change and population policies, weak coordination mechanisms for population and climate change programmes,? they say.
The researchers add that other barriers for Malawi also include weak analysis of issues and slow approval of policies, poor implementation of policies, insufficient government funding for population and climate change programmes, leading to over-reliance on donors, weak technical capacity in programme design, implementation, and evaluation, as well as weak research capacity to generate evidence to guide policies and programmes.
On her part, Malawi?s Principal Secretary (PS) for Environment and Climate Change Yanira Ntupanyama admitted that the country?s population was growing at fast rate.
?Malawi?s human population is now at about 14 million. Projections show that with increasing fertility rates, this figure would reach 26 millon by the year 2030 which will make it hard for people to access basic needs for their upkeep,? she said adding that Malawi is even already paying a price for unsustainable natural use.
?Malawi as a country would be richer by $191 million per year which is translated into giving up 5.3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) each year if soil, forest, fisheries and wildlife resources were used sustainably. This is largely due to unsustainable use of natural resources. It is for this reason, therefore, that we need to fully integrate population dynamics into climate change adaptation,? said Ntupanyama.
According to the joint research by PAI and AFIDEP Climate Change Impacts in Malawi will be enormous since the country?s economy is dependent on rain-fed agricultural production, which is dominated by smallholder farming.
The World Bank says agriculture contributes 30 percent of Malawi?s Gross National Product (GNP), and supports livelihoods for over 80 percent of the
population.
Like many other African countries that depend on rain-fed agriculture for economic survival, Malawi is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Some of these effects are already being seen: erratic rainfall, increased water scarcity, rising temperatures and extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods and droughts.
There are also decreases in agricultural production and environmental degradation as a result of climate change threatening the country?s economy and its people?s well-being.
Climate change is also contributing to low fish stocks, unstable hydroelectric production and rapid deforestation in Malawi.
Given the strong links between climate change, related environmental issues and population dynamics, integrated policy and programme responses to addressing them would make sense and offer combined benefits.
Yet the two issues are weakly linked at policy level, and programmes to address them are largely implemented separately.
Malawi?s population policies, including those addressing reproductive health and gender, do not specifically make reference to climate change.
However, they do highlight the need for inter-sectoral policy, planning and programme cooperation to address the country?s population challenges and achieve sustainable development.
Malawi does not yet have a climate change policy. Nevertheless, most of the policies on environmental issues related to climate change ?land, water, irrigation, fisheries, energy, forestry, and food security? recognize the role of population dynamics in the preservation of natural resources.
The policies however, are not as emphatic in integrating population interventions in their work.
Source: http://www.africanews.com/site/Malawi_Population_climate_change_to_swallow_nature/list_messages/42433
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