FAQs

To begin with, MWASIP is an acronym that stands for Malawi Watershed Services Improvement Project (MWASIP). MWASIP is focusing on restoring degraded landscapes in priority river basins and improve water security, agricultural productivity and livelihoods. The program consists of three investment project financing (IPF) operations targeting different priority river-basins with a duration of six years each and a three to four year overlap between each project.

The project has three main components. The three components are the following:

• Component 1 – Scaling Up Landscape Restoration. The component aims at scaling up landscape restoration interventions in the middle and upper Shire River Basin while enhancing the livelihoods of smallholder farming communities, addressing climate change vulnerabilities (floods and droughts), and improving or preserving the carbon sequestration capacity of the watershed. Specifically, the component will finance:
• Performance-based grants for restoration of approximately 95,000 ha of degraded landscapes in the middle and upper Shire;
• Matching grants for 200 farmer groups and 60 agri-enterprises to enhance agricultural-based livelihoods and boost household incomes;
• Advisory services and capacity building on SLM practices, including climate-smart agriculture practices and silvicultural techniques, targeting approximately 15,000 people and comprising of farmers, agri-entrepreneurs, private tree growers and associations of smallholder tree growers, CMCs, VNRMCs and district extension workers;
• Social marketing campaign to influence farmer behavior concerning adoption of SLM practices; and
• Local-level participatory land-use planning, land demarcation, adjudication and registration of 20,000 ha of land in the target area to provide security of tenure for approximately 16,000 small-holder farmers.
• Component 2 – Improving Watershed Services. The component aims to maximize the benefits people and communities obtain from managing watersheds sustainably, as a basis for developing institutional and financing mechanisms needed to sustain restoration activities beyond the project period. Specifically, the component will finance:
• Performance-based grants to selected watershed management institutions –i.e., NWRA, DoF, and DNPW – to implement their institutional development plans aimed at improving watershed services and building adaptive capacity to climate change;
• Pilot market-based mechanism for the provision and maintenance of selected watershed services -will involve using payments or rewards to individual farming households to encourage certain land-use practices that result in a specific watershed service that is of value to downstream water users;
• Enabling infrastructure and climate information services to maximize the livelihood benefits from improved watersheds, and to enhance climate-resilience of both the farming community and the ecosystems in the watershed.
• Enabling infrastructure investments will include
  • development of 38 multipurpose water source infrastructure (i.e., 10 small dams, 20 rainwater harvesting structures, and eight high yielding boreholes, etc) to benefit approximately 42,000 people;
  • Construction of 10 small-medium scale irrigation systems to provide irrigation services on approximately 2,400 ha of cropland and benefiting about 5,000 farmers;
  • Construction of rural feeder roads, bridges and market centers to improve access to markets, and clean water for value addition, where required.
• Climate information services:
  • Will finance technical assistance and related goods, works and services to develop and market a suite of hydrological, weather and climate products and services to enable climate-informed decision-making by different watershed users; and
  • Will also provide innovation grants to selected private sector innovators and developers to support development of hydrological and climate products or services. At least one of the products/services developed will be an agro-weather service, capable of serving at least 8,000 farmers with agro-weather information services.
• Component 3 – Technical and Project Management Support. The component aims at strengthening the Ministry of Water and Sanitation’s capacity to implement the proposed project (and subsequent projects in the series) in partnership with other line MDAs, and to monitor and evaluate its development impact. The component will finance:
• Technical Assistance for Preparation of future phases of the project, including delineation of priority (hotspot) catchments in Linthipe, Bua and Dwangwa river basins; forming CMCs, preparing catchment management plans and micro-catchment plans; and carrying out feasibility studies and engineering designs for enabling infrastructure investments identified in the catchment management plans;
• Technical Assistance and Capacity Building on Biophysical and Ecological Monitoring to track changes in the targeted landscapes as a result of project interventions;
• Impact Evaluations to build the evidence-base to inform future projects in the SoP;
• Project Management Support to the multi-sectoral technical team on project management, financial management, procurement, monitoring and evaluation, and on implementation of environmental and social standards; and

Incremental Operating Costs associated with day-to-day management of the project.

The Development objective of MWASIP is to increase the adoption of sustainable landscape management practices and improve watershed services in targeted watersheds. However, for the development objective of MWASIP to be achieved, there is need for clear indicators that will guide the measuring of the development. In this case, the achievement of the PDO will be measured using the following indicators:

• Proportion (%) of target farmers adopting sustainable landscape management practice;
• Land area (ha) under sustainable landscape management practices;
• Land area (ha) showing an increase in Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and the Land Surface Water Index (LSWI), correcting for short-term climate effects;
• Number of people gaining access to water for productive use; and
• Proportion (%) of target farmers benefiting from an increase in products sold to the markets or an increase in income from marketed products.

The project will directly benefit approximately 350,000 people, the majority of which are small-holder farmers.  They will get access to inputs, services, and knowledge to adopt SLM practices.

 The interventions will also benefit key actors in selected agriculture and sustainable forest value chains, including service and input providers, buyers, processors, and aggregators who will be involved in the matching grant scheme for agricultural production.

 The project will benefit national, district and community-level institutions by providing essential tools, knowledge, and strengthening their capacity to continue investing in sustainable landscape management beyond the project period.

Watershed services refer to the benefits people obtain from ecosystems in a watershed.  Benefits can be direct, such as provisioning services (i.e., food, water, forest products, etc.) or regulating services (i.e., control of floods, erosion regulation and water purification); or indirect, through supporting services for the functioning of ecosystem processes (i.e., nutrient cycling; soil creation; and photosynthesis). Ecosystems also provide people with non-material benefits such as aesthetic pleasure, recreational opportunities, and spiritual and cultural sustenance. The project’s result framework focuses primarily on provisioning and regulating services, as the other services are difficult to measure and quantify.  That said, the project’s interventions will improve all watershed services and help to build the resilience of both people and ecosystems to climate change-induced impacts.

The project has adopted the same implementation arrangements used for Shure River Basin Management Program (SRBMP). The Ministry of Water and Sanitation is the lead implementing ministry for the project. However, individual project components, sub-components, and activities will be implemented through relevant MDAs as appropriate. The Multi-sectoral Technical Team (TT) comprising staff from various ministries and departments, has been retained and strengthened to provide coordination support for the project.  The TT function as the Program Management Unit (PMU).  A Program Coordinator, seconded from Ministry of Water and Sanitation leads the PMU/TT. The Project has engaged a Project Management Support (PMS) team to support the TT on project management, financial management, procurement, monitoring and evaluation, and environmental and social standards implementation. 

The Project Steering Committee (PSC) and the Project Technical Committee (PTC) provide overall policy and technical guidance, respectively. The District Councils/local governments will play a critical role in delivering SLM/CSA extension services to farming communities in the target watersheds. Catchment Management Committees (CMCs) are being formed in line with the Water Resources Act 2013 to spearhead the implementation of landscape restoration activities, working with existing VNRMCs at the micro-catchment level.