Residents of the area surrounding Kasungu National Park rely on agriculture and tourism. The COVID-19 pandemic’s onset destroyed tourism and impacted rural markets. Many locals suffered tragedy as a result.
As travel restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19 disrupted domestic and international tourism and trade in 2020 and 2021, Malidadi Langa, the chair of the Kasungu Wildlife Conservation for Community Development Association (KAWICCODA), noted the effects of the pandemic in and around Kasungu National Park in Malawi.
“Even before COVID-19, tourism wasn’t a panacea for eradicating poverty.
These towns didn’t suddenly become prosperous because to tourism.
According to Langa, many small-scale players in the tourism value chain were already having difficulties because they lacked the funds necessary to withstand the effects of protracted business interruptions.
“The effects were felt widely. People who supply vegetables, market oddities, and work in lodges suddenly found themselves without a source of income, sometimes even enough to cover their daily food costs. Some tour guides had to switch careers and become fisherman.
Trees were being hacked down for charcoal by men and women. Brighten Ndawala from the Mangochi-Salima Lake Park Association claimed that people were in a grave situation (MASALAPA).
The group oversees how the communities residing inside the borders of Lake Malawi National Park are distributed a portion of the park’s revenue.
Consuming Our Resources
We nearly went out of business, according to Franciwell Phiri, managing director of Small Steps Adventure Tours in Malawi. We had three guides remaining out of a total of 10, and they were only paid per activity.
The local freelance guides in Malawi who worked for his organization were also actively utilized; they were trained and paid every tour “so that they could earn a living from the attractions that they and their communities help protect.”
And wherever we travelled, we bought local food and produce to help the local economies. Additionally, we provided home stays in villages where visitors could interact with locals and help communities, particularly women, generate much-needed income.
Phiri, the company’s CEO, said that borrowing money in Malawi was “difficult” due to the country’s high interest rates as the travel agency battled to refund customers and pay back deposits for cancellations.
“We were consuming our resources. Our own vehicles, which we had spent the previous ten years paying off, were among the things we sold and lost.
The wounds are deep and will take a long time to heal, according to Phiri, who managed to stay in business by providing locals with discounted prices and by using his understanding of Malawi’s rich cultural legacy to give presentations and lectures to businesses in order to make a pittance.
“In order to compete in the market once more, we need the equipment back. Organizations who aim to promote SMEs are our only hope. We are content to repay loans. Just give us favorable terms, Phiri added.
A COVID-19 effect
International travel to Malawi grew steadily in the ten years prior to 2020. The travel and tourism industry contributed 6.7 percent of the country’s GDP in 2019 and supported close to 516,200 jobs. However, after the arrival of COVID-19 in 2020, tourism’s overall GDP contribution fell to 3.2 percent, with a loss of 167,000 employment in the travel and tourism industry.
“This is significant. Over 500,000 people who depend on tourism to support their daily necessities saw a third of the nation’s jobs in this industry disappear, according to Nikhil Advani of WWF.
He is the project manager for the Africa Nature-Based Tourism Platform, which in the months after the pandemic’s beginning interviewed 50 tourism-related businesses in Malawi.
No organization could maintain operations at pre-pandemic levels without urgent funding, according to the data gathered.
The majority of respondents said they would prefer these monies in the form of grants or soft loans, but Advani pointed out that the desire for the type of financial support was less important than how quickly it was needed.
The African Platform for Nature-Based Tourism
The platform, which was established in 2021 with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) totaling $1.9 million, is collaborating with local partners in Malawi and ten other nations to raise at least US$15 million in support of the most vulnerable COVID-19 affected communities that reside in and around protected areas and engage in nature-based tourism.
Malawi, a nation with various natural features like Lake Malawi, national parks, and cultural and historical sites, is home to KAWICCODA, the African Nature-Based platform’s partner there.
The African Nature-Based Tourism Platform assisted KAWICCODA in preparing and submitting a funding proposal to the BIOPAMA Medium Grants Facility for an Alternative Livelihoods Project as a direct response to the COVID-19-related collapse of tourism in the area of Kasungu National Park after the data collection phase was complete.
Regardless of whether the funding is awarded to KAWICCODA, the proposal creation process itself was a unique and significant learning opportunity for which KAWICCODA is eternally thankful to the Platform, said Langa.
A gradual recovery
Ndwala estimates that recent visitors to Lake Malawi National Park are still at least 80% lower than pre-pandemic, despite Malawi lifting most travel restrictions – as of 1 June 2022, travelers can enter Malawi with either a vaccination certificate or a negative PCR test.
“I believe that the key takeaway is that because the majority of those working in the tourism industry relied only on it, the prospect of it failing was not taken into account, leaving people unprepared.
Communities that depend on tourism require assistance in bolstering their operations and building alternative industries that can go beyond tourism.
Money is not the only issue. Planning and money management abilities are important, according to Ndawala.
In Malawi, agriculture already occupies over 50% of the land. However, the pandemic also had an impact on these marketplaces, and rural areas had few choices for generating income to fund purchases of food and tuition.
According to anecdotal evidence, the pandemic did seem to exacerbate animosity between the community and the protected regions. People went to nature to find something from which they could quickly obtain money or food in order to survive, and this led to encroachment and poaching, he claimed.
Malawi is well renowned for its charcoal industry, which contributes to deforestation because rural residents burn wood to make bags of charcoal to sell to truckers for a wage.
Additionally, even though the World Bank (https://bit.ly/3P2NzR4) contributed US$86 million to financial support for small and medium-sized businesses in Malawi in September 2020, those funds only helped to ease the immediate strains brought on by the pandemic; consequently, additional assistance is now needed (World Bank, 2020).
preventing hunger
Nearly all of the 50 businesses questioned in Malawi expressed interest in one or more food production techniques as a potential source of revenue in addition to tourism.
The majority of businesses were focused on guinea fowl farming, fruit juice production, and beekeeping. A few people also reported selling tree seedlings and growing mushrooms.
These communities already engage in the growing of maize, ground nuts, soy, and beekeeping, among other activities.
They may become self-sufficient with help, claims Ndawala, who thinks they struggle because they “sell the raw crops and make very little.” Increasing the value of these crops could have a significant impact. Peanut butter could be prepared from ground nuts. Milk can be made from soy.
Matias Elisa, who served as the community extension manager for Kasungu National Park during the pandemic, claims that the effects of climate change are also felt by communities that depend on agriculture and are consequently obliged to engage in poaching or encroach on the park in order to survive.
He thinks recovery efforts should concentrate on assisting individuals to stand on their own because starvation is a genuine threat to those residing in isolated and rural locations.
Advani says, “What we’re trying to achieve with the African Nature-Based Tourism Platform is resilience to future shocks, be they from pandemics, climate change, or disasters of any nature.”
He hopes that funders will recognize the potential in assisting the most vulnerable in pursuing livelihoods that are also beneficial to nature.
Women’s empowerment
Particularly vulnerable are women. A December 2021 World Bank report titled “Unlocking Malawi’s Economic Growth by Bridging the Widening Gender Gaps in the Labor Force” states that the largest employment sector in Malawi, agriculture, employs about 59 percent of women and 44 percent of men.
In comparison to fields maintained by women, men often produce yields that are 25% higher.
Additionally, women who work as wage earners make 64 cents (512 Malawi Kwacha) compared to men’s dollars (800 Kwacha).
The importance of expanding women’s options for employment was emphasized in a presentation by Jessica Kampanje-Phiri (PhD), from Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and Joyce Njoloma (PhD), from World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Malawi.
They were there for a side event during the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66) 2022 NGO Forum on the topic of empowering women in the COVID-19 green economic recovery.
They pointed out that women’s unequal access to land, lower access to farm labor, and inferior access to more advanced agricultural inputs and technologies are all contributing factors to the gender gap in agricultural output.
Women are still less able to deal with – and are more exposed to – the negative effects of the changing climate and pandemics like COVID-19, despite “growing recognition of the differential vulnerabilities as well as the unique experiences and skills women and men bring to development and environmental sustainability efforts”
Recovery based on rights
The National Wildlife Act of the nation guarantees the rights of the populace to profit from tourism and conservation.
According to Langa, Malawians, including women, will discover ways to improve their lives through community-based natural resource management with the right assistance, including aggressive advocacy from community organizations like KAWICCODA.
Langa represents Malawi Community Based Natural Resource Management groups in the Southern Africa Community Leaders Network (CLN), which promotes community rights, as the Chairperson of the National CBNRM Forum.
The first step, according to him, is to empower local populations to preserve the conservation advancements accomplished in our protected regions.
This includes making sure that tourism-related income boosts local communities’ quality of life and advertises regional travel on the domestic market while building complementing, environmentally friendly companies.
Other issues including human-wildlife conflict, access to resources inside parks, and methods of law enforcement need to be addressed in addition to income and benefit-sharing.
“In southern Africa, there is currently a narrow window of time for people to reconsider their plans and reinvest in their companies.
There is hope that, with the correct backing, we may achieve something better than before thanks to efforts like the African Nature-Based Tourism Platform. That shouldn’t be wasted, he advises.