Raphael Mweninguwe

RAPHAEL MWENINGUWE - Sep 24 2008 06:00
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Raphael Mweninguwe is forced into a close encounter with the notorious township ‘taxi'
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Raphael Mweninguwe is an award-winning journalist and media consultant based in Lilongwe

RAPHAEL MWENINGUWE is a freelance environmental journalist based in Malawi.He is a correspondent for Baird Publications in Australia, IRIN and Mail and Guardian in South Africa.AIVAR EPA is a freelance journalist and editor in Estonia.He is a former editor in chief of the Estonian environmental news agency Greengate, and was a correspondent for AFP.

The award has been won by Raphael Mweninguwe , a journalist with the Malawi newspaper 'The Nation'.Since he himself could not make it in time to Bonn , the Malawi Ambassador to Germany , Silas S. Ncozana , received the prize on his behalf.

In a written statement accepting the award , Mweninguwe said that many African news editors do not take environmental issues seriously.They concentrate much on political violence when it comes to reporting about Africa.They do not report on environmental degradation that is taking place because of the wars , he added.

In his article headlined Encroachers attack Thyolo , Mweninguwe paints a graphic picture of the human struggle for survival against land erosion and loss of water in the Thyolo Mountain , a forest reserve , and the Kalulu and Thyolomwani hills in his country.

Little did people ... know that their encroaching on the mountains would have far reaching consequences on their lives.The encroached hills are catchment areas from which several rivers in the district originate , writes Mweninguwe.

With the heavy deforestation that came with people encroaching on the hills , rivers no longer flow during the dry season because they dry up quickly.The wetlands are no longer the wetlands they used to be , says Mweninguwe.

According to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan , each year an additional 20 million hectares of agricultural land becomes too degraded for crop production , or is lost to urban sprawl.

Yet over the next 30 years the demand for food in the developing world is expected to double.New land can and will be farmed , but much of it is marginal and , therefore , even more susceptible to degradation , said Annan in his message on the World Day to Combat Desertification.

He added.

The award has been won by Raphael Mweninguwe, a journalist with the Malawi newspaper 'The Nation'.Since he himself could not make it in time to Bonn, the Malawi Ambassador to Germany, Silas S. Ncozana, received the prize on his behalf.

In a written statement accepting the award, Mweninguwe said that many African news editors do not take environmental issues seriously."They concentrate much on political violence when it comes to reporting about Africa.They do not report on environmental degradation that is taking place because of the wars," he added.

In his article headlined "Encroachers attack Thyolo", Mweninguwe paints a graphic picture of the human struggle for survival against land erosion and loss of water in the Thyolo Mountain, a forest reserve, and the Kalulu and Thyolomwani hills in his country.

"Little did people ... know that their encroaching on the mountains would have far reaching consequences on their lives.The encroached hills are catchment areas from which several rivers in the district originate," writes Mweninguwe.

"With the heavy deforestation that came with people encroaching on the hills, rivers no longer flow during the dry season because they dry up quickly.The wetlands are no longer the wetlands they used to be," says Mweninguwe.

According to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, each year an additional 20 million hectares of agricultural land becomes too degraded for crop production, or is lost to urban sprawl.

"Yet over the next 30 years the demand for food in the developing world is expected to double.New land can and will be farmed, but much of it is marginal and, therefore, even more susceptible to degradation," said Annan in his message on the World Day to Combat Desertification.

He added.

CONTACT: Wildlife and Environmental Society of Malawi, www.wildlifemalawi.org. -Raphael Mweninguwe
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Raphael Mweninguwe is a freelance environmental journalist based in Malawi.He is a correspondent for Baird Publications in Australia, IRIN and Mail and Guardian in South Africa.

Aivar Õepa is a freelance journalist and editor in Estonia.He is a former editor in chief of the Estonian environmental news agency Greengate, and was a correspondent for AFP.

The United Nations Secretariat of the Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) have selected Malawian journalist Raphael Mweninguwe as the winner of the Desertification Media Award 2000.This new international prize for journalists, which is endowed with i2,570, is aimed at highlighting the global threat of desertification.

In her encomium in Bonn, Germany, the city's Lady Mayor Bärbel Dieckmann stressed the importance of supporting young journalists addressing topics like desertification.Highlighting the causes of intensified desertification in the media could draw the world's attention to the fact that lifestyles in the North were also having a negative impact on this development."As cities, we are most affected by this aspect, and as cities, we are called upon to make people aware of the consequences of this disastrous trend as early as possible," Dieckmann said.

Prize-winner Mweninguwe will be receiving his award during the Fourth Conference of the Contracting States to the Convention to Combat Desertification, to be held in Bonn from 11-22 December 2000.By mid-June, a total of 167 countries had signed the convention.