WILD BW: NATIONAL ECOSYSTEM ASSESMENT REPORT-THE BIBLE OF ECONOMIC POLICY DIRECTION AND IT’S FLYING UNDER THE RADAR.

Oshinka Tsiang.

BUIST VICE CHANCELLOR PROFESSOR KETLHATLOGILE MOSEPELE DELIVERING THE NEA REPORT TO MINISTER WYNTER MMOLOTSI

The mainstream media missed it. That’s not a surprise though because many of the major elements of the globalisation architecture are being laid out in plain sight and many of us are unaware. The latest is last week’s unveiling of the Botswana National Ecosystem Assessment or the BW-NEA report which was officially presented to the Minister of Environment and Tourism Wynter Mmolotsi in Gaborone. This is a voluminous document of nearly one thousand pages.  “The bible of policy making when it comes to the management of natural resources in Botswana.” According to Professor Ketlhatlogile Mosepele, the Vice Chancellor of Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (BUAN) which led the nearly five year study. He calls the results, the voice of the people.  Several teams of experts including the University of Botswana, environmentalists, local and international culture specialists, various UN institutional advisers, traditional leaders and nearly two thousand local indigenous knowledge experts contributed to the data collection. The book is so intimidating that a summarized version of roughly fifty pages has been produced for use by policy makers and aptly entitled, Summary for Policy Makers. The research contains multiple recommendations for policy makers. It identified six priority ecosystems in Botswana which are, aquatic and wetlands, desert, hill, grassland and shrubland, agroecosystem and forest and woodland. It draws damning conclusions concerning the future of these ecosystems if specific policy decisions are not taken, or are delayed. According to the report the greatest dangers posed to the ecosystems in Botswana are climate change in combination with land degradation, biodiversity loss, and anthropogenic demands. In other words pressures brought on by human settlements, agriculture, mining, and other developments. The report describes Botswana’s ecosystems as being at a cross roads.

It concludes that the aquatic and wetlands ecosystems have been declining for more than two decades but a particularly sharp decline since 2010. It says cumulatively the decline has seen 25 percent drop in aquatic and wetland volumes. With regard to forest and woodland ecosystems, pressures come from,  land clearing for agriculture and settlements, recurrent veld fires, elephant herbivory, invasive alien plants, and climate variability. These lead to fragmentation, biodiversity loss, and declining carbon storage. The agroecosystem on the other hand is said to be relatively stable while the grassland and shrubland ecosystem has fluctuated significantly over the past three decades indicating ecological instability. The study also concludes that Botswana’s desert ecosystem remains largely under-researched, resulting in significant gaps in evidence-based conservation, policy development, and sustainable development planning. As for the hill ecosystem, the study finds among other things that prolonged droughts and erratic rainfall has caused drying of freshwater springs; reduced availability of provisioning services (e.g., fodder, water, wild fruits). It points out that the Hill Ecosystem faces mounting pressure from mining, agriculture, overgrazing, and urban expansion. Unregulated extraction of granite, dolomite, and sand degrades habitats, destabilizes slopes, and reduces vegetation cover.

The study reports extensively on human wildlife conflict and specifically on human elephant conflict especially in the Ngamiland areas. “Human–Elephant Conflict in Ngamiland has intensified over the past two decades, with escalating crop damage, property loss, and safety risks undermining household food security, resilience, and tolerance toward elephants.” It says such conflict highlights the need for integrated evidence based management. Unsurprisingly, the report calls for a paradigm shift towards coexistence that  combine community-based concessions, crop substitution with elephant-averse species such as chili, eco-labelled value chains, and leveraging global biodiversity finance instruments and mechanisms. This in simple terms means a change of farming practices to enable wildlife space. It adds that complementary instruments such as risk-sharing schemes, corridor-based land-use planning, and incentive-linked insurance enhance socio-ecological resilience by protecting livelihoods while maintaining ecological connectivity. In a nutshell, the study recommends creating corridors for wildlife within farming areas and enhancing community and national benefits from global climate linked financial markets.

While it touches on traditional hunting as a way of use of wildlife it is silent on trophy hunting. It is silent on the use of hunting as a conservation management practice and livelihood enhancement practice. The report recommends several legal and policy reforms to support bio-financing. These include amendment of the Wildlife Conservation and National Parks Act to mandate for automatic review of fees every three to five years, amendment of the DWNP Act to transform the department into a parastatal, amendment of the Tourism Act to provide tax incentives for certified operators and enactment of a Climate and Biodiversity Finance Act to create a legal mandate for mobilizing funds from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), carbon markets, and biodiversity credits.

 This is just but the tip of the proverbial iceberg in terms of what is contained in the study and the recommendations therein for policy makers. What must be stressed is that there is an urgent need to unpack it and diffuse it across the rest of society as it is clearly going to be the policy making blue print going forward. It cannot remain a secret known only to the academics and a limited number of decision makers. There may be a need to serialize it ecosystem by ecosystem seeing that there is a certain degree of inevitability in terms of implementation. This is after all part of the rolling out of the global agenda 2030. The least we can do, is know what’s coming. So far, only two hard copies have been made available to the Ministry with the promise that a digital version will be made available on line. Our hope is that access will be simplified.

FYI:  WILD BW will be launching a podcast this week to coincide with the 2026 start of the hunting season. This is our next step towards reclaiming Botswana’s voice in the conservation dialogue.