Stakeholders have emphasized the importance of assessing biodiversity areas in order to collect species information for Malawi for digitisation.

This came out recently in Blantyre during a Red List of Ecosystem (RLE) and Key Biodiversity Areas (KBA) workshop which Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST) and Environmental Affairs Department organised.

The meeting targeted critical stakeholders in biodiversity and environmental management in Malawi.

The workshop also brought together members of the national coordinating group, university students and partners from South Africa.

The meeting aimed to equip a national coordinating group with knowledge on how to assess KBAs in the country.

National Coordinator for Spatial Biodiversity Assessment, Prioritization and Planning (SBAPP) Dr Tiwonge Mzumara-Gawa said they are targeting 13 KBAs for the assessment.

"The skills that they will learn will be important so that we can soon have key biodiversity areas which have been assessed using new global standards. Currently, we have few species information in the country. So what an ecosystem type map does is that although we don't know what trees and what animals are in this particular space, we can assess the larger landscape level," she said.

Dr Mzumara-Gawa added that the exercise will help in identifying the number of species and which areas need protection in the country's ecosystem.

Research Scientist in the Department Agriculture Services in the Ministry of Agriculture, Arnold Makhwira, said it was important to digitalise their services to have accurate information about species.

"This will also help us to tell policy makers on the needed decisions to be made in order to protect the species. Now, many people are indulging in things that are harmful to our species but it has been difficult to track them because of a lack of resources. This workshop will therefore help us in bridging the knowledge gap," Makhwira said.

The initiative is part of activities under the SBAPP project being implemented in Malawi, South Africa, Namibia and Mozambique, with funding from the French Development Agency and the French Facility for Global Environment.