Malawi is one of the countries endowed with natural resources that provide essential ecosystem services to its population. But many natural resources risk extinction because of the increased demand that has been caused by developmental and utilization activities, health burdens, population expansion, poor environmental protection and climate change. Nkhota-kota is one such place whose abundant natural resources (game reserve, lake and rivers, lagoon) inhabit diverse medicinal and nutritional treasures and these are currently threatened. Nkhota-kota also has rich traditional culture and local knowledge of herbal medicine mostly due to abundant and diverse medicinal plant species; herbal medicine has been used as fundamental part of the traditional culture and economic self-sufficiency. People in rural and urban areas of Malawi depend on traditional herbal medicine and some of them come from Nkhota-kota. Research has shown that use of medicinal and nutritional plants for herbal medicines may destroy vegetative cover of the environment, habitat for wild animals and biodiversity as it is reported that 70% of plant collections involve destructive harvesting and Nkhota-kota has been equally affected1. With 80% of the local and world population relying on herbal medicine according to the WHO, this represents significant burden on forest cover and biodiversity conservation, henceforth these threats have serious consequences on primary health care and human life.
The project will be implemented by the College of Medicine (COM) of the University of Malawi (UNIMA) in corroboration with its partners in pharmaceutical sciences and herbal medicine research such as National Herbarium and Botanical Gardens, Forest Research Institute of Malawi (FRIM), University of Strathclyde, University of Notre Dame and University of Ghana. The COM is statutory corporation of the Government of Malawi established under the University of Malawi Act and it is a teaching and research institution. The core duties of the COM is research and teaching, evidence generation and testing for policy formulation and implementation (implementation science).
The main aim therefore is to promote the use of medicinal and nutritional plants for forest conservation, healthcare and local economic self-sufficiency through: preservation and conservation of nature?s medicinal and nutritional treasure; protection and rehabilitation of medicinal and nutritional plants natural resources; capacity building of key project players and awareness creation about biodiversity conservation; afforested and reafforested areas (especially in critical watersheds) protection; improvement of baseline information (valuation and accounting of medicinal and nutritional forest resources). Results of the project would include herbal medicine gardens established within or close to communities, increased number of species in the gardens, increased number of medicinal products and entrepreneurs, value addition of the herbal medicine products, improved forest cover, increased engagement in herbal medicine business, improved climatic weather, decreased incidences of diseases like malaria, reduced risk of plant extinctions, reduced stigma against herbalists and herbal customers, tourist attraction, reduced risk of resource exhaustion, reduced number and frequency of natural disasters and scarcity of water and improved food and natural drugs for domestic animals. The project will supplement the other community, district, country, regional and global forest conservation efforts by government and NGOs like World Vision who are commercializing forest conservation. This is a community landscape/seascape conservation project in the GEF SGP themes working on conservation of the landscape cover (trees/shrubs) emphasizing on medicinal, aromatic and nutritional plants as well as seasonal shrubs (for firewood) that have been heavily depleted