Preliminaries

The process to formulate the NAP

The NAP process

ABOUT MALAWI

Geographically, Malawi is a landlocked country situated in southern Africa bordering Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia (Masi 2017). The country has a total area of 118,484 km2 of which 20% is covered by Lake Malawi. The country’s topography is varied. In the mountainous sections of Malawi surrounding the Rift Valley, plateaus rise generally 800 m to 1,200 m above sea level, although some rise as high as 3,000 m in the north. Malawi experiences sub-tropical climate conditions and annual changes between wet and dry seasons. The wet season generally occurs between November and April and the dry season between May and October. Average temperatures range between 18° and 27°C, and the wet season can bring average monthly rainfall in the order of 150 mm to 300 mm (Masi 2017). Annual rainfall ranges from 500 mm in low-lying areas such as the Shire Valley to above 3,000 mm in the northern highlands (USAID 2017a).

Left panel: District map of Malawi. Source: doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242226.g001; Right panel: Malawi Climate Vulnerability Map. Source: https://fraym.io/malawis-adaptive-capacity-to-climate-change/final_map/

Malawi is characterized by widespread poverty, and a rapidly growing population with high population density, putting pressure on land, fisheries, water and other natural resources (Masi 2017). Malawi is already experiencing some of the effects of climate change with observed rising temperatures and changes in the variability of rainfall (Masi 2017). Adverse impacts have already resulted in considerable damage, disrupted economic activity and adversely affected the lives of large number of people, particularly the poor who are the most vulnerable to weather related shocks (Masi 2017). Challenges resulting from climate change include (Masi 2017): dry spells and seasonal droughts linked to crop failures, food security and nutrition availability; intense rainfall associated with severe riverine and flash floods and damaging infrastructure including roads, bridges, schools and health facilities; soil erosion due to intense rainstorms combined with ongoing degradation of upstream catchments causing high sediment deposition loads in rivers hence massive siltation in Lake Malawi that adversely affects hydropower energy generation; heat stress and outbreaks of livestock diseases like Newcastle disease in chickens and African Swine Fever in pigs; degraded grazing fields resulting to low fodder availability and quality; competition for resources like water and grazing land; denudation of forests and woodlands driven by biomass energy demand also causing biodiversity loss; increase in disease incidence and transmission of cholera, schistosomiasis and malaria.

Or build the book from the R console:

bookdown::render_book()
bookdown::serve_book()