Nachitukula Primary School
Tackling flooding by saving forests
Event Overview
- Prize Category: Environmental Action
- Format: Panel discussion
- Country: Malawi
- Languages: Streamed live in English with automated captions in Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and other languages to be confirmed later.
- Learn more about the Top Ten Shortlisted Schools in the Environmental Action category on the World’s Best School Prizes website.
Phalombe Teacher Training College and Nachitukula, a primary school in Phalombe, Malawi is, like other schools in the district, constantly besieged by floods. The flooding sweeps into the classrooms and offices, leaving nothing but destruction in its wake. But the school quickly realised that reforesting was the answer to its problems.
The district of Phalombe has experienced massive deforestation, which has led to floods in this low-lying region that have damaged the school building and cancelled lessons. The school has launched an initiative to plant 60 million trees on 4,000 hectares of land in the district to combat deforestation. The school expects this to tackle flooding by reducing soil compaction, thereby enabling ground water to penetrate, decreasing surface runoff and sediment migration.
Join us to learn how we tackled flooding through forest preservation.
Speakers
Moderator: Andrews Nchessie
Andrews Nchessie is a Lead Person of Climate Action and Sixty Million Tree Planting. The Tree Planting Program he is undertaking. The program is aimed at re-afforestation areas where trees have been cut down. He believes that through tree planting, carbon dioxide absorbing properties of trees make tree planting a great way to tackle climate change. Not only do trees play this role they also reduce flood risk from their roots to their leaf canopies. Trees take moisture out of the soil, which decreases the amount of water contributing to flash flooding events, therefore is trees are planted massively we reduce floods.
Speaker 1: Misheck Yagotha Munthali
Speaker 2: Moses Mtambo
Mr Mtambo is a forester and currently working as District Forestry Officer in Phalombe Malawi. I have held this post for 4 years. I hold a BSc in forestry. I also possess a diploma and a certificate in the same field. As a district forestry officer my job includes; enforcement and interpretation of the forest policy and law, creation of forest reserves and plantations, coordination of all forestry activities in the District, collaboration with stakeholders in forestry and all related matters, supervision of subordinates among others. I also work with the Lead Person of Climate Action and Sixty Million Tree Planting.