Binna Kipandula Defends Master’s Thesis in Restoration Ecology at AUI
Photo: Leonard Gondwe
Today, Ms Binna Kipandula, a GRÓ LRT scholarship recipient, successfully defended her master’s thesis in Restoration Ecology at the Agricultural University of Iceland (AUI), within the Department of Environmental and Forest Sciences.
Binna previously participated in the GRÓ LRT six-month training programme in 2022, while serving as a Senior Assistant Land Resource Conservation Officer at the Ministry of Agriculture and Food in Malawi. In 2023, she returned to Iceland to pursue a master’s degree in the newly established international MSc programme in Restoration Ecology at AUI, supported by a GRÓ LRT scholarship.
Her thesis, titled “Challenges and Opportunities of the Catchment Management Approach in Mitigating Land Degradation: The Case of Mkuwazi Catchment, Malawi,” was supervised by Dr Jóhanna Gísladóttir and Dr Utra Mankasingh, both of AUI.
GRÓ LRT warmly congratulates Binna on this important academic achievement and applauds her dedication to improving land restoration in Malawi. We wish her all the best as she heads back to Lilongwe to continue her work with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, where she’ll keep making a positive impact in the fight against land degradation and in promoting sustainable land use.
Abstract:
Land degradation is a major environmental challenge affecting many parts of the world, including Malawi, with significant impacts on agricultural productivity and livelihoods. The government of Malawi, with support from the World Bank, is implementing integrated catchment management (ICM) as a sustainable approach to manage water and land resources and to halt land degradation. Integrated Catchment Management promotes the integration of environmental, social, and economic factors within a catchment to ensure sustainable land management. The aim of this research was to identify challenges and opportunities associated with the implementation of ICM in the Mkuwazi Catchment in Malawi. To shed light on this focus group discussions and key informant interviews were conducted. The key challenges identified include governance and policy gaps, financial and payment difficulties, structural and technical limitations, logistical and administrative constraints, occupational and safety risks, and socioeconomic barriers hindering participation. Despite these challenges, ICM presents opportunities, such as economic benefits for local communities and improved land productivity. Participants considered swale construction and gully reclamation to be the most effective interventions involved in the catchment management. However, governance structures surrounding the ICM in the Mkuwazi catchment need to be strengthened, finance mechanisms improved, technical capacity enhanced, and community involvement promoted to address the challenges involved. Such measures will help reverse land degradation and support sustainable livelihoods in Malawi.
