| Overview : Approximately 85 percent of Malawi’s population lives in rural areas with the majority engaged in smallholder rain-fed agriculture. The agriculture sector, including fisheries, remains a key source of economic growth for the country and is extremely vulnerable to climate variability, change and disasters such as floods, droughts, heavy rains and strong winds. Between 1967 and 2003, the country experienced six major droughts and 18 incidences of flooding, which heavily impacted smallholder farmers. The 2011-12 droughts had severe effects on food security in many districts, with approximately 2 million people affected, particularly in the southern districts. Malawi has just recovered from an intensive flood event in 2015, which left many lives and livelihoods destroyed. It is estimated that the floods affected 1,101,364, displaced 230,000 and killed 106 people. The country experience drought conditions in 2016 due to a strong El Niño that resulted in extensive crop failures affecting 2.8 million people. This combination of consecutive droughts, mixed with heavy floods, makes countries such as Malawi highly vulnerable to climate variability, which is only expected to worsen under a hotter future climate. Increases in the severity of extreme, events such as floods and storms (due to rising temperatures and atmospheric moisture) will potentially further exacerbate the hazards faced by both farmers and fishermen. This is of particular concern on Lake Malawi, where fishermen are already forced to search for fish further offshore, regularly encounter severe weather, and take longer to reach the safety of the shore than they did in the past. |
