Forest is found in each of Malawi’s three categories of land tenure: public, customary and private (using the classification in the 1965 Land Act rather than the 2002 Land Policy that has not yet gone into effect). These land tenure regimes may be subdivided in turn: (i) Public into Forest Reserves, National Parks and Wildlife Reserves; (ii) Customary into communal forests including Village Forest Areas (VFAs), and forests on allocated land; and (iii) Private into Leasehold and Freehold. The Department of Forestry (DoF) has the primary responsibility for the management of all forests outside of National Parks and Wildlife Reserves, but the blend of private sector, local government, and community involvement varies between subcategory.

Public

The Department of National Parks and Wildlife (DNPW) manages public forests within Malawi’s five National Parks and four Wildlife Reserves, which cover a total of 1.1m ha (MNREE 2010). These forests are managed in accordance with the 1992 Wildlife and Parks Act with an emphasis on conservation, though sustainable harvesting of resources is allowed with a permit (Art. 39). DNPW has four regional divisions: North, Central, East (Upper Shire), and South (Lower Shire).

The Wildlife and Parks Act was amended in 2004 to give communities and the private sector a greater role in protected area management and the 2000 Wildlife Policy is also under review for the same reason. DNPW entered into a 25-year management concession agreement with African Parks in 2003 to manage Majete

Wildlife Reserve including all lodges, infrastructure, and enforcement; this agreement was extended to Liwonde National Park and Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve in July 2015 for a 20-year period (Face of Malawi 2015). Communities within the 8km-wide support zone surrounding each protected area can participate in collaborative management with DNPW by forming Natural Resource Committees at the Group Village level. Each NRC has ten members and is chaired by the Group Village Headman. Collaborative management includes both: (i) revenue sharing of gate receipts; and (ii) resource utilisation programmes under which DNPW delegates the right to approve harvesting of Non Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) to NRCs. Since gate receipts can only be transferred to a legally incorporated entity, DNPW enters into collaborative management agreements with community associations that group a number of NRCs together. Where a Community Association is in place, the divisional DNPW staff participate in its meetings and collaborate with the community NRCs that compose it (ECODIT 2013).

Under the 1997 Forestry Act, the DoF is responsible for the management of Malawi’s 88 Forest Reserves, which total 0.9m ha and are comprised of 90% indigenous forests and 10% plantations (MNREE 2010). The DoF has three Regional Forestry Offices (North, Central, South) as well as District Forest Officers (DFOs) in each of Malawi’s 28 Districts. Many of the forest plantations were established post-independence under the regime of President Banda and were heavily deforested with the introduction of multiparty democracy in 1994; Ndirande Plantation in Blantyre, for example, disappeared entirely within two years (Mauambeta et al 2010). In theory, all charcoal making or commercial wood harvesting requires a licence from the DoF (Forestry Act Art. 40).

The approval of successive policies – notably the 2005 Standards and Guidelines for Participatory Forestry and the new draft Forestry Policy – show that community co-management has climbed the agenda within the DoF. The DoF divides co-managed Forest Reserves into management “blocks” and enters into co-management agreements with a “Block Committee” at the Group Village Level in respect of each block (DoF 2005). The draft Forestry Policy also suggests continuing the role of the private sector in public plantation management, while noting that management has not always met expectations in terms of harvesting cycles and replanting (GoM 2015b).

Customary

Since the colonial period, the Village Forest Area (VFA) has served as the state-sanctioned framework for managing common-access forests on communal land. This association with the colonial past meant that large areas of the VFAs were cleared post-independence in the spirit of reclaiming the land; their number plummeted from 5,000 in 1964 to 1,200 in 1985, subsequently rebounding to 2,565 in 2010 after the introduction of multiparty democracy (Mauambeta et al 2010; MNREE 2010).

At the district level, the 1998 National Decentralization Policy and Local Government Act, devolved certain forestry functions and licensing responsibilities from central government to District Assemblies, as represented by District Forest Officers (DFOs).

The thrust of the existing 1996 Forest Policy, and even more so of the new draft Forestry Policy, is that communities should manage forests through Local Forestry Organisations, which include both: (i) Village Natural Management Committees (VNMRCs) that administer VFAs; and (ii) “clubs” in respect of forests that have already been allocated to a defined group of individuals, families, or a clan. The relevant Village or Group Village Headman can declare a VFA, which should be registered in the name of the VNRMC with the DFO and managed in accordance with a Forest Management Plan agreed with the DFO. Unless and until those structures are in place, the DFO retains authority for regulating and licensing use of forest lands (DoF 2005, DoF 2007a, DoF 2003).

VNRMCs are technically subcommittees of the Village Development Committees and are therefore linked into the architecture of decentralized local government. VNRMCs work with agriculture and forestry staff stationed at an Extension Planning Area (EPA) and who work under the District Agricultural Development Office (DADO) or DFO respectively. A given community can have a VNRMC, tasked with general local natural resource management under the Local Government Act, an NRC with co-management responsibilities in a National Park, and/or a Block Committee with co-management responsibilities over a Forest Reserve (ECODIT 2013).

Private

Agricultural estates are required to maintain 10% forest cover in order to be self-sufficient for wood, particularly an issue for flue-cured tobacco (DoF 2001). However, as Nanthwambwe (2013) observes, no mechanism exists to enforce compliance with this requirement.

Enforcement

Charcoal production and wood harvesting require a license from the DoF; however, as shown by the widespread practice of both by unlicensed parties this requirement is rarely enforced (GoM 2009). A series of influential studies, including the 2009 Biomass Energy Strategy, suggested legalising and regulating the charcoal industry, on the basis that current practices are unsustainable and that the potential Value Added Tax (VAT) on charcoal could more than double DoF revenue (Kambewa et al 2007). A Charcoal Forum took place in September 2015, the outputs of which will inform a future white paper on charcoal production.

In general, deforestation rates in National Parks and Wildlife Reserves are lower than in Forest Reserves, a result commonly attributed to two explanations: (1) DNPW rangers are armed (due to poachers) and, therefore, offer greater deterrence than unarmed DoF rangers; and (2) collaborative management agreements over National Parks and Wildlife Reserves offer a share of gate receipts, a potentially significant source of revenue compared to co-management agreements over Forest Reserves that offer a share of much-smaller licence fees from harvesting permits.

The DoF recently partnered with the Ministry of Defence to send troops “on exercise” into Dzalanyama Forest Reserve to reduce the reserve’s rate of deforestation and forest degradation; Dzalanyama was gazetted in the 1920s to protect Lilongwe’s catchment. The ability to collaborate with the armed forces on forest protection is included in the DoF’s new draft Forestry Policy (GoM 2015b).