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Program

Plant trees in Malawi

Malawi, a landlocked country in southeastern Africa, is defined by its topography of highlands split by the Great Rift Valley and enormous Lake Malawi. The lake’s southern end falls within Lake Malawi National Park – sheltering diverse wildlife from colorful fish to baboons – and its clear waters are popular for diving and boating

This reforestation initiative is working with local communities to restore native forests across the landscape at a number of sites across Malawi. In many village areas the need for fuel wood forces local people, often women, to walk long distances. This has led to forest degradation in nearby areas, fragmenting wildlife habitat and presenting hardships for local farming communities. That’s why your support will go a long way! This tree planting has a huge impact by not only restoring forests and all the benefits they bring to wildlife, watersheds, climate stability and more, but doing so in combination with sustainable development. This project will restore indigenous forest trees to the landscape in cooperation with communities while installing water wells and pumps, as well as fruit trees. Planting in combination with sustainable development goals tackles the roots of deforestation by taking pressure off mature trees and educating local women how to build fuel efficient clay brick stoves to save firewood and improve their lives.

Impact

By focusing on restoration with local communities, pressure on remaining forests is lessened while providing fuelwood from dropped branches and leaves from existing trees to meet people’s resource needs. In combination with plantings of fruit trees, installation of community wells and other low-tech developments, forests can be restored, habitat for wildlife enhanced and people’s lives improved. In the process, newly planted trees will begin the process of sequestering carbon and improving hydrological benefits to surrounding areas. In time these new forests will also provide many other benefits by preventing erosion, improving soil health, lowering temperatures and providing regenerative resources for people. These areas will then once again become complex ecosystems capable of supporting a broad range of wildlife and other species while allowing sustainable livelihoods to develop.

Species

Malawi’s forests are hugely diverse and a wide variety of tree species native to the region will be planted on this project. Some of these include indigenous hardwoods such as East African mahogany, African teak and several native acacia species. Useful non-indigenous trees used for medicine, and fruit trees like mango, citrus and pawpaw will also be planted. This project will focus on maximizing tree species diversity, while planting fruit and medicinal trees useful for the community.

Partner

OneTreePlanted is a non-profit organisation based in Vermont with a mission to make it simple for you to plant trees around the world. Started in 2014, they have more than doubled the number of trees planted year over year. Fast-forward to today, they now work with awesome reforestations partners in North America, South America, Asia, and Africa who help them get trees in the ground to restore forests after fires and floods, create jobs, build communities, and protect habitat for biodiversity.

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