Malawi’s Honorable Minister of Environment and Climate Change Management, Ms. Catherine Gotani-Hara, launched the National Environmental and Climate Change Communication Strategy (NECCCS) on 30 August, 2012. The NECCCS is an important tool to raise awareness on the importance of sustainable environment and natural resource management and climate change among various stakeholders. The Strategy has been supported by PEI, the National Climate Change Programme, the Africa Adaptation Programme (AAP) and FAO. The joint programming among several projects demonstrates how the PEI model is successful in collaborating with other agencies and thereby ensuring country-donor coordination and resource efficiency.

PEI also contributed to the formulation of the “Malawi Growth and Development Strategy II.” At the joint PEI-CCP Tripartite Meeting held on 19 September, 2012, the Government of Malawi expressed satisfaction with the implementation of the PEI Project and hailed its contributions to the formulation of the national development strategy, particularly to the chapter on Climate Change and Environmental and Natural Resources Management (ENRM). The PEI Economic Valuation on Sustainable Use of Natural Resources in Malawi was used to justify the need for the country to invest in ENRM and Climate Change. As a result of the economic assessment and other PEI initiated studies, poverty-environment linkages are increasingly being discussed in the media reflected by articles such as ‘MW loses K32 BN of GDP Annually due to Unsustainable Use of Natural Resources’ published on 12 April, 2012, in The Nation.