Project description

Title: Malawi Border Zone Development Project
Commissioned by: Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ)
Country: Malawi
Lead executing agency: Chief Executive of Rumphi District Assembly, Department for Local Government and District Administration in the Office of the President and Cabinet
Overall term: October 1996 to March 2004

Context

The expansion of the Nyika National Park and the Vwaza Game Reserve and the resulting resettlement of about 12,000 inhabitants to the peripheral zones of these areas led to a conflict between the protection and use of resources. Illegal hunting, logging, agricultural activity, and bush and forest fires have all increased, threatening game, soil and water resources. The population is growing, the inhabitants are returning to their former homes in the centres of the parks, and cultivable land is in short supply in the peripheral zones.

Objective

Efficient and sustainable use of the ecological and economic potential of the peripheral zones of the Nyika and Vwasa nature reserves improves the living conditions of the population without endangering the parks’ natural resources.

Approach

GTZ promoted measures for increasing the fertility of the soil and agricultural production, and the introduction of sustainable cultivation methods and erosion protection measures. The project’s training and upgrading measures supported the development and use of technologies for preserving natural resources and for their adapted use, and for utilising alternative sources of energy. The formation of community organisations has ensured that the population is involved in the measures.

Setting up and equipping schools, constructing local water supply facilities and latrines, establishing health stations and improving hygiene and energy use in the communities were a further part of the measures for improving living conditions in the peripheral zones in the parks.

The project was cofinanced by the German KfW Entwicklungsbank (KfW development bank) and by the EU micro project and food security funds.

Results achieved so far

The park peripheral zone concept developed by GTZ has been adopted by the National Parks authority as a model for nationwide safeguarding and usage of the National Parks and has been enshrined in policies and the legislature.

GTZ has made a major contribution to replacing the historical non-sustainable “appropriation economy”. Biodiversity is maintained in the peripheral zones owing to controlled use of resources and fire protection measures. People’s environmental awareness, which has been evolving slowly, has revealed itself in the involvement of many communities in afforestation and erosion protection measures and in the use of energy-saving wood-burning stoves.