The Elephant Marsh, Malawi – Part 3: the application of an eco-social model to assess options for managing ecological status

In 2016, an application was prepared by the Malawian government for the Elephant Marsh on the Shire River to be granted RAMSAR status. As part of the support for that application and to help guide the resulting management plan, the eco-social holistic environmental flow assessment model DRIFT was set up for the Marsh. The aim was to predict the response of the Marsh to scenarios of changing water and sediment inflows, and to different levels of harvesting of its natural resources, in order to identify threats to and viable options for sustaining its biodiversity. The results of the DRIFT assessment provided three main points of guidance for the RAMSAR application and the subsequent development of a management plan. First, it was shown the Marsh has been fairly resilient to short-term changes in the inflows of water and sediments, having endured significant fluctuations in both in its history, and was able to recover in terms of biodiversity from extreme dry periods. Second, it was revealed that conservation efforts to protect biodiversity should concentrate on the central, eastern and southern areas, as they were less vulnerable to decreases in water flows than the other areas of the Marsh. Third, restricting access to some parts of the Marsh, in particular the core eastern, central and southern areas, could markedly improve its overall condition, increase many of its resources and improve its resilience to Climate Change. Of the access restrictions assessed, the greatest benefit to the ecological integrity of the Marsh would be achieved if all access to the central area was stopped, and if access to the eastern and southern areas was reduced to 50% of the 2014 baseline levels.