Nkhotakota has Lake Malawi to the east, Chia lagoon (an important wetland and aquatic environment for fisheries and rice farming). As a lakeshore district, a majority of the population also earn their living through fishing directly or indirectly by processing or selling. The Chia Lagoon watershed has vast natural resources vital to the livelihoods of its 55,000 human inhabitants. The uplands are characterized by Brachystegia-Julbernardia savanna and woodland interspersed with intensively cultivated areas of maize, groundnuts, cassava and small areas of tobacco. The lowland plains support Acacia-Bauhinia woodland with paddy rice, cassava and maize as dominant crops. The Chia Lagoon, which has an outlet into Lake Malawi to the east, is an important fishery resource for communities living around its borders with a body surface area of 17 km2.

The dwindling in fishing in Chia has negatively impacted in the lives of the 55000 people who depended on the lagoon for their livelihoods. Loss in fish selling business by women and young people has left them without any option for economic sustainability. Over 65% of women and young people around Chia lagoon have depended on the ability of the lagoon to produce adequate food for both consumption and commercial purposes. There are several social aspects of human life affected due to failure of the lagoon to provide for the inhabitants. Increased food insecurity among households around the lagoon, poor nutrition uptake especially among children, increased school drop outs and increased HIV and STI cases are some of the key social aspects emerging from the failure of the long term reliable natural resource to provide for the communities. While efforts are being made to rehabilitate the ability of the lagoon to start providing, the need for social safety nets is a must so that other projects on natural resource management yield productive results. When no social livelihoods interventions are implemented, communities will continue fishing hence depleting the fish resource in the lagoon which is already meagre.

FOCCAD is already implementing similar projects in Nkhotakota district and in the targeted communities.The project is of both local, district and national importance as it answers emerging challenges at community level while integrating and leveraging issues of food insecurity, nutrition, environment, education and social support at district and national level. The project addresses one of the priority areas of the GEF-SGP on community landscape/ sea scape management. The project directly answers the component of livelihoods and empowerment. Women and youth will be supported to sustainably depend on other alternative sources of income and this gives space to both the landscape and sea scape of the Chia lagoon to rehabilitate. Once the project is successful, the Chia lagoon will once again have adequate natural resources for both consumption and commercial purposes and benefits.

Objectives;
-To enhance the resilience and economic capacity of 10500 vulnerable households especially women and youth around Chia lagoon landscape/seascape in Nkhotakota district by April 2019.
-To enhance the capacity of women, youth and community structures to effectively manage the conservation of Chia lagoon landscape and seascape by April 2019.

Results;
The project anticipates to see the following changes in people?s lives and the targeted natural resource: increase in number of community members taking part in conservation of biodiversity, increased food security among women and youth households around Chia, increased school attendance among children around Chia lagoon, increased economic purchasing power among women and youth, enhanced ability to hold duty bearers accountable on environment and conservation related interventions and resources, increased productivity of the biodiversity after conservation interventions, increased women and youth participation in conservation of biodiversity and livelihoods activities for resilience building, increased community based environmental monitoring systems.