Climate change opportunity for business growth—Expert

Climate Change and Meteorogical Department has asked companies to turn climate change threats into business opportunities.

The department’s deputy director Gray Munthali made the request in an interview in Zomba where the Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) organised an exchange visit for 20 village natural resources management committee (NRMC) members from Salima and Karonga.

“We all know climate change poses a threat to the survival of companies and organisations, but it also has a silver lining.

“We should not only focus on threats climate change brings as that may eclipse business opportunities global warming presents,” he said.

Munthali cited the beverage industry as one sector that can cash in on global warming.

“With the climate getting warmer and warmer, most people would want to cool themselves with a bottle of Coke or an ice cream. This is an opportunity the beverage industry should not allow to slip through its fingers,” he said.

Munthali said the air-conditioning industry can also capitalise on climate change to grow its capital and create more jobs for people.

“Every home and office would want to have an air-conditioning system of one form or another with the warm weather,” he said.

VSO senior programme manager for secure livelihoods Dagrous Msiska said they took the committee members to Zomba to learn how their colleagues in the district were rehabilitating and managing the Lake Chilwa Basin Climate Change Adaptation Project (Ccap) currently being coordinated by Lead.

Among other places, they visited Nambwinda forest area and reafforestation project along the Sambaisa riverbanks in Machinga, and a conservation farm at Kapira Village in Zomba.

The committees are implementing a Ccap with technical support from VSO, Lead, Ministry of Local Government, Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy (Cepa) and The James Hutton Institute.

Ccap, granted by the Scottish Government’s Climate Justice Fund under the Waters Project, has engaged communities in Nsanje, Chikhwawa, Salima and Karonga to plant trees along riverbanks and bare lands as one way of managing the effects of climate change.

You can get more information about the Lake Chilwa Basin and the Climate Change Adaptation Project from here.