In three months the rains will arrive in Nkatsano village and the river will flow again. "What happened previously is that the area around the village would always flood and displace the local people, " explains Patrick Chibota, a Malawian working with the aid agency Goal.

The 75 houses in the remote Nkatsano village in the south of Malawi are home to over six hundred men, women and children. The small houses are built from mud and roofed with thatch or, for those who are more fortunate, some galvanised metal. The people have few possessions as they battle with poverty, hunger and the devestating impact of Aids.

Some 14% of the national population is infected with the virus. Offical figures show that 90% of Malawians work in agriculture while 80% of those in rural areas are described as subsistence farmers. One in five do not have enough food to eat.

The people in Nkatsano had become used to the annual battle with flooding. The situation has only been getting worse in recent years. But they have been contributing to their own problems by cutting down the trees in their area.

In a country where electricity is a luxury, over 90% of people rely on firewood for cooking.

Trees are also cut down to sell for charcoal. The loss of forest cover and soil erosion only added to the precarious food situation as fertile soil was washed away.

Satellite images have shown the huge impact of deforestation on the country, which is one of the ten poorest in the world. According to the World Bank, in 2000 about one fifth of Malawi's surface area was under forest. In recent years, forest cover has been declining by an estimated 2.4% per annum. And the problem is not just one for Malawians . . . deforestation accounts for 30% of all global greenhouse gases.

The loss of tree cover in countries like Malawi contributes to increasingly erratic and unpredictable global weather patterns. The increased incidences of flooding and drought, however, only make the already considerable challenges in Malawi far greater.

The Irish aid agency Goal has been working with local communities in the south of Malawi to start tackling these problems. Since 2005, the villagers in Nkatsano have planted about 60,000 trees along a 1.5km stretch on both sides of the river bank.

The impact has been dramatic. Soil erosion has stopped, and last year the river maintianed its size and direction.

"The trees hold the soil in place and has prevented the river changing course, " the chief says.

Along with replanting, several aid organisations are encouraging villagers to fell fewer trees. Reducing the demand for firewood is another Goal project at Mbangu village, where 32 local women have been producing fuel-efficient stoves.

"We work on Saturday and Sunday when our other work is done, " Treasa Joe says. She is a widow with three children. The other married women say the men in the village have shown resistance to their enterprise.

"Their husbands complain about the lack of profit for all the work and want us to stop, but we have told them no."

"The next time I come back and you have made money, I want all your husbands to apologise, " Cath Whybrow, Goal's Country Director in Malawi, tells the local women. Her remarks are met with broad smiles and applause from the women.

Agencies like Concern and Goal started to work in Malawi in 2002, when a state of emergency was delcared after two successive poor harvests. While a good harvest in 2006 has allowed Malawi to even export some produce this year, the overwhelming majoity of the country's population live from season to season with no crop growth outside the traditional growing season.

Up to 60% of rural households face chronic food insecurity for between two and five months every year. There is a huge dependancy on rain-led farming.

The irony is that Malawi is actually water-rich due to plenty of rainfall in the months between November to February, while Lake Malawi and other smaller lakes are considerable water resources. Still, less than 2% of the country's arable land is under irrigation.

Helping Malawians exploit the potential of irrigation is driving a Concern-backed project in Mibwabwa, an isolated village about an hour north of the capial. By encouraging the use of a low-tech treadle pump, Concern has helped the villagers to dig a 3km-long water canal.

On previously idle land, the local people now grow yearround crops including tomatoes, sugar cane and other vegetables, including Irish potatoes.

"We now have food during all the year, " says villager Moses Kathikwiri. He has a family of nine. Overall, the Concern project brings greater food security to more than 1500 people.

The villagers are also monitoring progress on their tree nursery, where 24,000 seedlings are being grown. "Our aim is to avoid soil erosion. The drought here was due to environmental damage so now we're trying to bring back new trees, " says Osbin Falimoe, Concern's area manager Earlier this year, Action Aid published a report on the impact of climate change in Malawi. "We found a direct link between weather and food production in Malawi, " says report co-author Rene Gommes, who works with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation.

The researchers also found that changing rainfall patterns and higher temperatures in Malawi has meant a shorter growing season and that the stable crop maize, ususally grown in Novermber, is now being grown in December.

"Malawians are experiencing climate change in the most direct way, through floods, droughts and hunger, " says Carol Kayira, the Food Security Officer with Action Aid Malawi.

"If people are cutting down trees then they should know the consequences. We are telling them about that, " says Osbin Falimoe from Concern.

Kevin Rafter's travel costs to Malawi were funded by a grant from the Irish Aid's Simon Cumbers Media Fund.

'People are living on nothing so we have to respond to that' "I AM amazed at the pro"le Malawi is getting. Maybe it is the Madonna effect, " Liam MacGabhann says, as he re"ects on the southern African country that was the centre of an international controversy last year when the pop singer adopted a Malawian child.

MacGabhann will be hoping to establish a deeper connection with one of the world's poorest countires when he arrives in the capital Lilongwe at the start of October as Ireland's "rst Ambassador to Malawi.

The Irish diplomat, who has two grown-up children, has spent the last three years as the number two in the Irish embassy in Beijing.

His main objective in his new posting will be to oversee a dramatic increase in Ireland's "nancial commitment to Malawi, which will rise from 2.5m in 2007 to about 30m in 2009.

The increased funding is due to the government's target of allocating 0.7% of GNP to development by 2012, helped along by last year's 'White Paper on Overseas Aid' with its strong focus on Africa. Malawi is now one of Ireland's priority countries for development assistance.

"This is a huge commitment by the Irish government to Malawi, " MacGabhann says. "The hope is that one day they will not need aid, but that is some time off." He will be joined by Vincent O'Neill, a development specialist with Irish Aid in Dublin.

O'Neill will be accompanied by his family, including his 12-year-old twin daughters, and he describes the posting as a "big adventure". A qualified doctor, he previously worked in Sierra Leone and Uganda.

A property in Lilongwe has already been leased for the new embassy, which will also employ some Malawian staff. MacGabhann and O'Neill will spend the next twelve months determining their spending priorties for the following five years.

Despite the work of agencies like Goal, Concern and Trocaire, Ireland has little pro"le in Malawi according to Ephrain Munthali, the Lilongwe-based Bureau Chief of the Nation newspaper group. "Few people would know about Ireland so the embassy will bring a direct presence as you'll be participating, instead of being like Big Brother and just looking in, " he says.

The Irish diplomats will have close co-operation with the Malawian government . . . not surprising, as development aid from all sources will account for over 40% of the national budget in 2007. Irish aid money will be targeted at increasing food security and helping the fight against Aids. Given the lack of democratic maturity in a country which only emerged from a thirty-year dictatorship in 1994, priority will also be given to enhancing the quality of government and civil society. "There are immediate humanitarian needs, people are living on absolutely nothing so we will have to respond to that. There are no easy solutions, " O'Neill says.

A former British colony, Malawi became independent in 1964 but endured three decades of dictatorship. Democracy was established in 1994 but national institutions and public administration remain weak. It is one of the 10 poorest countries in the world.

Just over half of the 12 million population live in poverty. Life expendency is 39 years. Infant mortality is 110 for every 1000 births. Access to health services is very poor. One Concern malnutrition programme at Chiwanba in central Malawi is located at a health centre with two nurses but no doctors. The centre should be catering for 10,000 people but in fact deals with 66,000 . . . many of whom walk up to 15km for treatment.