Celebrating right to clean environment amid piling rot

From Chitipa to Nsanje, piling waste flash past. The heaps signpost travellers to Malawi’s trading centres, towns and cities.

They are seen on the roadsides as well as in waterways, open grounds, marketplaces and unplanned dumpsites created by town and city councils in under-served communities.

Gone is the era when decent buildings signalled approaching urban settlements and business hotspots. Now indiscriminate waste disposal by a fast-rising population personifies a breakdown in waste management silently normalised by negligent generations.

None of the country’s 28 districts and four cities has requisite waste management facilities.

The disparity revolts against the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment for all, the talking point during International Human Rights Day today. The observance marks the start of the yearlong mass awareness and stock-take campaign in the countdown to the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10 next year.

Malawi Human Rights Commissioner Makhumbo Munthali says: “This year’s theme on the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment should ramp up national conversation and stocktaking on how we fairing in keeping with global commitments to tackling environmental degradation and climate change.

“Environmental management issues aren’t social issues, they are human rights issues. We should start looking at environmental issues and commitments with a human rights lens.”

Section 13 of the Constitution requires the government to make and implement laws and policies to safeguard a clean and healthy living and working environment for everyone, including future generations.

On July 28 this year, the UN General Assembly’s unanimous vote affirmed a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right for all–not just a privilege for some.

“This resolution sends a message that nobody can take nature, clean air and water or a stable climate away from us, at least not without a fight,” said UN Environment Programme executive director Inger Andersen.

UN special envoy for human rights David Boyd termed it “a catalyst for action”.

“The resolution empowers ordinary people to hold their governments accountable in a way that is very powerful,” he stated.

However, most Malawians scarcely demand, enjoy and protect this right.

The Malawi Environmental Protection Agency (Mepa) in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Climate Change enforces the Environment Management Act amended in 2017. The law prescribes stiffer fines for polluters, with Mepa fining and closing several businesses for dumping waste into rivers and open spaces.

Mepa acting director Michael Makonombera says: “The UN resolution is a major milestone that sets a fence around everybody to live in clean and healthy surroundings.

“Therefore, Malawians should take it as an individual and collective responsibility to ensure that we all live in a clean environment free from factors that cause diseases. We have no other home. There is no planet B, so we need to take good care of it.”

Centre for Environment and Environment Policy (Cepa) executive director Herbert Mwalukomo is excited that the human rights commemoration dials up the right less prioritised.

“This is good news,” he tells Weekend Nation. “This year’s theme shows seriousness to ensure the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is enjoyed and upheld globally.”

Cepa champions market clean-ups in Blantyre City to shine a light on plastic pollution and poor waste management.

In 2020, President Lazarus Chakwera launched a monthly community clean-up campaign, but it fizzled a month after ministers toured all districts to localise the imitation of Rwanda’s Umuganda.

For Mwalukomo, the popular indifference and dumping piling waste in the wrong places call for renewed action.

He explains: “It’s a contradiction that we are celebrating a right to a clean and healthy environment amid neglected filth, but it’s also an opportunity to remind each other to handle waste responsibly and call on duty-bearers to take action.

“We all have to take responsibility for the waste we produce so we can enjoy and protect this right.”

A clean, secure and sustainable environment is among the enablers of Malawi2063 long-term vision to create an inclusively wealthy and self-reliant nation by its centenary of self-rule.

“Sustainable management of the environment will include adequate waste disposal, treatment and recycling; air and water pollution management; and prudent water resource management,” it reads.

Mwalukomo warns the vision will flop like its forerunner—Vision 2020—if sanitation-related diseases and disasters keep wiping billions required for national development.

He states: “It’s time to stop paying lip service to calls for sustainable environmental management and ensure everyone participates in making environmental laws and rights work.

“Action will mean a healthy population and the money spent on treating preventable infections will be better used to achieve the Malawi we want in 2063.”

According to Ministry of Health estimates, over half of outpatients nationwide seek treatment for sanitation-related infections. The preventable diseases predominantly include diarrhoea, with the raging cholera outbreak claiming 370 lives from about 11 700 confirmed patients since February.

Environmentalist Dorothy Nhlema argues the Human Rights Day theme is timely as sanitation-related infections, floods and “other consequences of the damage we have done to the environment can be appreciated” during the rainy season.

“Everyone has the right and duty to ensure we live in a clean and healthy environment,” she says.

Poor waste handling also contributes to climate change fuelling flooding and droughts.

When contaminated streams burst their banks, the flood washes both solid and liquid waste into water people drink and use for cleaning hands, food, pots plates and other utensils.

Nhlema states: “It is sad that Malawians, including the government, do not prioritise the right to a clean environment, resulting in several crises that show disrespect for the environment.

“Local councils that once emptied communal bins three times a week now, take three weeks without picking overflowing skips, saying they have no fuel or trucks. This has to change.”n