Across southern Africa, large-scale investments in the promotion of commercial agriculture and food processing infrastructure, to promote growth of rural economies, have been associated with large land acquisitions and increased irrigation. These land use and landscape scale changes have implications for rural livelihoods, natural resource access and use, and biodiversity.
Work Package 3 focuses on landscape scale changes in Zambia and Malawi, to understand how land use change and how new commercial production systems using intensified production practices are shaping and impacting the livelihoods of rural farmers, and altering the ecology of the landscape. We are also exploring how crop irrigation and associated changing water use and infrastructure, in combination with climate change and variability, is impacting access to water for sanitation and the distribution of insect vectors and vector borne disease risk for humans and animals.
