The 16 August edition of The Nation, a popular daily newspaper in Malawi, includes an opinion piece written by Rachel Mkandawire, a PhD candidate at FABI. Rachel said she submitted her article following reports in July that 350 million trees were planted in Ethiopia in a single day. She explained that despite her home country’s efforts at countering the effects of deforestation by planting 50 million trees a year, most of these do not “reach the fifth year”. She writes that even though offering cash incentives to communities to plant trees elsewhere has worked, it may not be sustainable for the case of Malawi. Instead, she suggests, “the linking of community developmental agendas to tree sustainability can be a plausible idea.”

You can read Rachel’s article here.