THE DAMBO ECOSYTEMS OF THE DIAMPHWE AND LILONGWE
RIVER CATCHMENTS. II. APPRAISAL OF POTENTIAL INDICATORS
OF LIMITS TO RESOURCE AVAILABILITY AND USE
Mloza-Banda H.R
1
, Banda J.W., Lunduka R. and Mohamoud Y.M.
ABSTRACT
The presence of a high ground water table and year round vegetation
makes dambos an important resource for sustenance of people’s
livelihoods and livestock. However, environments consider them as fragile
ecosystem which should not be put to agricultural use that is often seen as
responsible for the degradation of dambo ecosystems. However, there is
no cogent basis for understanding why one scale of management of dambo
area might be better than another given the varied socio-economic
objectives of different land-users. The major goal of this case study was to
provide a first approximation of indicators of linkages between social and
biophysical systems in dambo ecosystems which allows the implications of
global change to be incorporated in current decision-making about the
agro-ecological role of dambo ecosystems. This second paper discusses
and appraisal, through the eyes of users of dambos, of those resources
that are vulnerable and/or activities that are sufficiently recurrent to be
useful for identification of vulnerability of damboland and to the livelihood
of communities dependent on dambos. Factors that impact the dambo
ecosystem, such as, crop production, livestock grazing, water regime, and
right of use of resources and parcels of dambos are discussed in the
context of candidate driving forces for human-induced ecosystem change
using the Diamphwe and Lilongwe river catchments of Central Malawi as
the paradigm of study
1
University of Malawi, Bunda College of Agriculture, P.O. Box 219, Lilongwe, Malawi.
Email:
HRMlozabanda@xcite.com