The 2020-21 National Forestry Season was officially launched on 16th December, 2020 in Nkhatabay. Among the key issues the government pledged to plant 60 million trees to be achieved through working with communities across Malawi.
The National Forestry Season is a period set aside by government to build responsible citizenry that cares for forests and trees as a way of sustaining natural resources services that we enjoy especially for an agriculture-based economy like Malawi.
It was interesting to see that the ministry engaged art as a way of raising awareness. Art is an easier and effective way of engaging communities and also ensuring that messages are internalized to effect and sustain behavior change.
Piksy composed and performed a song titled ‘Mundikonde’ as a theme song for the National Forestry Season. The song with cool local feel basically talks about how nice it was in the past before most forests were degraded, the song describes how deforestation has affected rivers, availability of wild foods, habitat for wildlife and how deforestation continues to affect soil fertility and rainfall patterns. The song pleads that to show love to mother Malawi we should take care of the trees and forests that support livelihoods.
Blending art with environmental education is an effective way of engaging the youth and rural communities who feel side-lined when discussions about environmental sustainability sound very scientific and disconnected from people’s reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment