Shire River Basin Management Program — Community Environmental Conservation Fund, Malawi

The Shire River drains Lake Malawi and supplies roughly 90% of Malawi's hydropower plus water for over 350,000 people downstream, but upstream deforestation and poor farming practices were causing severe erosion — an estimated three truckloads of soil lost per hectare each year in the worst-hit catchments, silting up dams and irrigation schemes.
Financed by the World Bank and implemented by Malawi's Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development with technical support from consultancy Mott MacDonald, Phase I of the Shire River Basin Management Program (2012-2019) ran a Community Environmental Conservation Fund (CECF) from 2016 to 2018. It formed 185 CECFs and paid communities a fixed $1,500 grant to carry out activities in their own village land-use plans: gully rehabilitation, riverbank protection, community-forest restoration and improved farming techniques, with repayments recycled to keep the fund revolving.
Independently, Mott MacDonald confirms the program delivered over 25,000 hectares of soil-and-water conservation work plus nearly 10,000 hectares of forestry restoration and more than 4,000 kilometres of stream and riverbank rehabilitation — consistent with the World Bank's overall figure of more than 35,000 hectares of degraded watershed rehabilitated, reaching an estimated 350,000 beneficiaries.
An independent evaluation brief found early indications were positive, with the CECF successfully motivating communities to act on their land-use plans, but it also noted candidly that the project has since closed and its technical support ended, recommending a follow-up assessment to check whether the rehabilitated land and community funds have persisted without that support.

Read the full analysis: https://www.mottmac.com/en/projects/shire-river-basin-management-programme/