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Natural resources degradation is a well-known development challenge in Malawi. In recent years, it has gained some prominence as a major cause of climate vulnerability linked to extreme events that regularly hit the country. However, progress on reverting land degradation and loss of forest cover is limited. For instance, recent studies suggest that land degradation hotspots cover nearly half (41 percent) of the land area in Malawi. Soil erosion, nutrient depletion, and chemical land degradation, including soil pollution and salinization/alkalization, are forms of land degradation that affect Malawi and are projected to increase under various possible climate and population growth rate scenarios.

Mr. Phiri is among the hundreds of firewood and charcoal traders logging into the Ndzalanyama Forest Reserve daily for a source of energy and income, unaware of the long-term impacts beyond the additional miles he has to walk every year into the deeper parts of the forest to collect more wood, as it becomes scarce in the outskirts of the reserve. - blog.wb.org/blogs

A version of this article appears in the print on June 17, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.