Addressing the Environmental and Social Effects Associated With Export-led Agricultural Development: Malawi and Zambia

Most economies in sub-Saharan Africa are agriculturally based, and two thirds of people live in rural areas where farming is one of few options to generate income. Most African leaders see agriculture as not only as fundamental for the promotion of food security and poverty reduction in rural Africa, but also as the main engine of economic development. It is the biggest direct employer and contributor to GNP.

Reflecting this emphasis, the African Union’s New Partnership for African Development (AU-NEPAD) launched the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in 2003. CAADP has been endorsed by African governments as a vision for promoting agricultural growth, food security and rural development. One of its goals is to attain an average annual growth rate in agriculture of 6 percent, while increasing the area under sustainable land and water management. The CAADP framework is being promoted through the preparation of country compacts. Regional Economic Commissions (RECs), including the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA), are responsible for technical backstopping and facilitation to help promote the CAADP processes in their member countries.

While agriculture growth is critical for national development, the current frameworks are also associated with a number of new socioeconomic and environmental challenges, in particular related to the difficulty of generating agricultural growth among small-scale and poorer farmers. High transaction costs and poor access to markets and agricultural inputs are central problems associated with cash crop production in the COMESA region, especially for these farmers. Meanwhile, agricultural productivity remains very low, and the natural resource base is seriously threatened by a combination of pollution, deforestation, the decline of soil fertility and biodiversity and impacts of climate change.

Through this project, WWF MPO and Southern Africa Regional Programme Office, together with COMESA, are responding to these challenges by linking environmental and societal challenges at the local level with policy and institutional responses at the national and regional levels. The long-term goal is to ensure that the benefits arising from increased investment in agriculture and trade result in genuine welfare improvements among small-scale farmers, and that these investments are environmentally sustainable, particularly in the face of increased climate variability due to climate change. The Nacala Development Corridor (NDC) has been selected as a pilot area to link challenges at the local level with policy and institutional drivers at the national and regional levels. The NDC, linking Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia, is an important Spatial Development Initiative in the region aimed at strengthening economic integration and agricultural growth.
The project focuses on small-scale cotton and tobacco growers in Eastern Zambia (Chipata) and Central Malawi (Mchinji). Preliminary information from Chipata and Mchinji raises a specific set of environmental and social challenges related to these crops. The timing of the preparation of the CAADP country compacts, which will be undertaken at a time when lessons learned in Chipata and Mchinji can be integrated into the national compacts, provides a unique opportunity for addressing the challenges identified on the ground. The experiences from this project will have the potential to be scaled up and applied in other COMESA areas and for other agricultural commodities.

The project is undertaking broad-based consultative processes and supporting analytical work to identify, explore and promote specific options related to the environmental, social and economic challenges associated with promoting agricultural production, sustainable land use, adaptation to climate change, and improving small-scale farmers’ livelihoods. By working with COMESA and the CAADP processes, the project will build national platforms for dialogue that link rural smallholder interests and environmental issues to the national CAADP processes in Zambia and Malawi. The following specific outcomes are sought through the project:

1. Strengthened capacity of rural stakeholders and small farmers to analyze, assess and address the environmental and socio-economic implications of cotton and tobacco production, processing and marketing.

2. Improved national consultative dialogues and forums to create opportunities for stakeholders to identify and generate institutional, policy and practice response options related to cotton and tobacco production, processing and marketing within the context of the CAADP processes.

3. Increased awareness among major stakeholders of the economic, social and environmental challenges and tradeoffs, as well as potential institutional and policy response options associated with cotton and tobacco production, processing and marketing.