An inaugural national symposium on ‘Achieving Inclusive Sustainable Economic Growth: From Rhetoric to Practice’, organized by the Economics Association of Malawi (ECAMA), was held in Lilongwe from 8 to 10 October 2014.  Representatives of the Government of Malawi, civil society, academia and development partners attended the three-day long event.

Poverty-Environment Initiative-Malawi presented on ‘Breaking the vicious cycle of low-income and poverty through sustainable environment and natural resources management.’ The presentation highlighted the significance of sustainable environment and natural resource management to poverty reduction and economic growth as well as the challenges of capturing the value of natural capital in national accounting systems. The lessons learned from the Poverty-Environment Initiative experience of supporting the Government of Malawi to adopt and implement pro-poor environmentally sustainable policies, plans and budgets were also emphasized.

The participants of the symposium acknowledged the progress made by the Government of to better reflect the importance of sustainable natural resource management in the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS) II as well as in national and sectoral policies, plans and budgets. However, they expressed concerns about the data collection tool that is being used for national accounting which had not been modified to better capture values of natural capital following the important findings of the economic valuation study. The National Statistics Office in collaboration with the Economic Planning and Development Division was encouraged to consider modifying the national accounting system to better accommodate the value of natural capital. 

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