National water policy [Malawi]

Although the country is endowed with relatively vast amount of water resources, it is currently encountering a number of growing competing demands and challenges. Some of these demands and challenges include the following: high population growth resulting in increase for demand for water for domestic, industrial and municipal uses, agriculture/irrigation, tourism, mining, manufacturing, water transport/navigation, energy/hydropower, and ecological sustenance. For instance, deforestation and environmental degradation due to increase in the use of wood energy may pose serious challenges to water resources while trans-border movement of tourists facilities such as boats and dinghies cause serious problem of introduction of exotic aquatic plants into the country’s water systems causing severe infestation of the systems. Also the extraction of natural resources for the manufacture of import substitutions has had an adverse impact on the environments, which in turn has
affected water as a resource. [authors abstract]