Daniel Kabichi’s telephone has been ringing a lot lately. As head of law enforcement operations within Malawi’s Department of Forestry, he represents the country’s latest strategy to fight deforestation and the increasingly worrisome trend of illegal and unsustainable charcoal. There is no investigative unit for forestry-related crimes in Malawi, so the Forestry Department’s work is even more important.
Thanks to the adoption of a new amendment to the country’s Forestry Act, which treats charcoal as a forest product, the government now has the authority to use stronger penalties, fines and jail time, as a disincentive to illegal forest activity. Under the amended law, crimes for the production, transport and commerce of illegal charcoal are treated similar to other as illegal activities (like illegal logging).
Every week, he gets dozens of calls. One of those calls led to the arrest of a “prominent person” who was moving and selling illegal charcoal around the city of Blantyre. Kabichi triangulated the information with Malawi’s Criminal Investigation Unit, and they made the arrest. The suspect was charged under the new law, and a magistrate fined him three million kwacha, or approximately $3,700 (US). It was the first time in Malawi’s history that somebody was fined this much for illegal charcoal.
