It is late in the afternoon and Esnati Molesi is still in her son’s maize garden, helping with harvesting.

Born in Jolasi village in   Traditional Authority Jalasi in Mangochi district, sixty year old Molesi has eight children and she has been farming for forty years.

On this late March afternoon, Molesi, her son and his family have moved from their home which is about four Kilometers away to a field to harvest maize.

The field like others in the area is located on a hilly slope overlooking the Shire River.

Molesi says her family has been using the hilly field to grow maize for more than four years now.

She says the family started using the hilly slope after noting that there was a reduction in yields in the garden they had been using over the last twenty years.

“In the past the family would get about forty bags from this field but the yields have     decreased over the past four years even after using fertiliser,” she said.

Molesi said the reduction in yields forced her family to look for better land and they settled for the hilly slope.

Molesi’s family like many others in the Upper Shire River Basin use hilly slopes for farming. In most cases there are no proper contour ridges to control soil erosion in such   areas.  This results in the   transportation of top soil in rivers which feed the Shire River and into downstream dams where Malawi generates 95% of its electricity.

In March, 2011, an environment, social and gender team from the MCC and MCA-Malawi visited some of the catchments and   hydro-power stations located in the upper Shire. The purpose of the trip was to look at Environmental and Natural Resources Management (ENRM) and social and gender issues, for the planning and subsequent implementation of the interventions under the environment component of the Compact.

Specific ENRM activities to be undertaken during the implementation of the Compact include the             procurement of silt dredgers and weed harvesters for the management of silt and aquatic weeds at ESCOM power stations and the Liwonde barrage. Biological control measures to address weed infestation will also be used.

Other activities also include the establishment of an Environmental Trust for the Shire river basin to support the environment and natural resources management activities in the area.

The establishment of the Trust is a long term solution to environment and natural resources management in the Shire river basin.