Climate focus: One of the world’s poorest states is battling droughts and floods
LIKE MOST Malawians, Wema Kaloti lives off the land. She grows maize on her family plot in Kamwendo, a village in the south of the country. But farming is getting harder as rainfall grows erratic. “Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little,” she says, glancing at the sky. Yields have dwindled. A hectare that once produced 20 sacks of maize now brings in seven. “There is not enough to sustain ourselves.”Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world.
This sort of weather is already increasingly common. In 2015 there were both drought and floods, and a year later further drought. Maize production fell by 30% in 2015, then an additional 12% in 2016, when 6.7m needed food aid. In 2018 Lake Chilwa, in south-east Malawi, dried up completely. Residents of Chisi Island, in the middle of the lake, no longer needed canoes to reach the mainland.
There are some efforts afoot to adapt to climate change while improving land management. In Kamwendo, Ms Kaloti is part of a “farmer field school” supported by the Food and Agricultural Organisation, a UN agency. Farmers like her are experimenting with faster-growing varieties of maize and growing banana trees in gullies to lessen the effects of floods.
Irrigation would leave farmers less at the mercy of the rains. But it has its own issues. Lake Malawi feeds the hydro-power stations that provide 90% of the country’s electricity. In 2015 these stations lost two-thirds of their capacity due to droughts, leading to widespread blackouts. This hampered irrigation schemes as well as businesses in the cities of Lilongwe and Blantyre.
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