A recent trip to Malawi took a small team from Peace Parks Foundation and long-standing donors and partners, KfW Development Bank, to visit communities living outside Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve. Here they got to see how various new projects, including a solar-powered irrigation scheme, are helping to change lives for the better
Using The Sun To Irrigate Crops
The water is pumped from high-lying areas within Nyika National Park. With the name Nyika meaning ‘where the water comes from’, this park plays a significant role as a water catchment area for not only communities living around Nyika and Vwaza Marsh but for the rest of Malawi too.
This new irrigation scheme is providing communities who live around Vwaza Marsh with access to potable water. This provides safe and clean drinking water and helps irrigate crops, improving the quality and quantity of crops. This significantly boosts the quality of farmers’ lives as they can now tend to larger fields without having to walk kilometres to get access to water.
Community Upliftment
Uplifting the local communities who live around the parks is a vital part of any conservation effort. As Peace Parks’ founding patron, Dr Anton Rupert, rightly said,“ without communities, conservation is just a conversation”. Thanks to funding from the German Government through KfW Development Bank, Peace Parks Foundation has implemented several community projects here. This includes conservation agriculture, tree nurseries, livestock programmes and seedling production.
Now 2023 will see about 12 000 people who live around Vwaza Marsh have access to potable water through this new water reticulation system. This reduces the risk that the people here currently face when drawing water out of dangerous sources crocodiles and hippos often inhabit.
Peace Parks and partners are committed to playing their part in providing communities such as these with sustainable access to water. This allows for greater access to food within the region and improved livelihood opportunities, all the while reducing the pressure on natural resources.
