Vulnerability of Ecosystem Services and Functions of Elephant Marsh, Malawi, to Land Use and Land Cover Change

Abstract Elephant Marsh is among the Ramsar sites in Africa that exist in complex conditions where its ecosystem services and functions (ESFs) have changed in time and space. The past 24 years have seen it being exposed to various threats instigated by land use/land cover changes (LULCC). Assessing its vulnerabilities under LULCC scenarios is essential in understanding the trajectory of its ESFs and for framing practical policy responses. This paper characterizes the Elephant Marsh ESF threats (drivers), pressures, state, impact, and the effectiveness of responses. The integration of the Fuzzy Delph method and analytical hierarchy process ranked the threats. The vulnerability assessment results revealed that demographic indicators (0.92) posed the most critical threats, followed by socio-economic (0.84) and ecological indicators (0.76). LULCC that occurred in eight-year intervals (1998, 2006, 2014, and 2022) driven by human and environmental dynamics reduced Elephant Marsh ESFs evidenced by a decline in the cumulative resilience coefficient (0.57 to 0.15), and increase in extreme weather events cumulative coefficient (0.3 to 0.8), indicating vulnerability state. The most impacted ESFs include regulatory, supporting, provisioning, and cultural ESFs. The study further showed that the effort to restore these most vulnerable ESFs under the current changing climatic scenarios mismatched the demand for ecosystem provisioning services, evidenced by the expansion of cultivated and irrigated land at the expense of areas covered by water, marshes, and forests. This study recommends integrating climate change mitigation efforts and community resilience planning in the development and implementation of wetland policy, management plans, and restoration strategies.