WILD BW: SKI’S GAMBIT A TIMELY INTERVENTION: NO MORE HIDING PLACE FOR THE MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT AND TOURISM

To suggest that the nine question gambit that former President Lt General Seretse Khama Ian Khama blitzed the Minister of Environment and Tourism with last week was unexpected would be naive to say the least. It’s not a secret that General Khama and Botswana’s conservation story are intertwined. It is also not a secret that his views on hunting as part of the mix runs counter to the current official policy of sustainable use. Now in his capacity as a Kgosi he has a platform to put to the test the resilience of the institutional architecture that supports the prevailing policy on conservation.

So when as he did last week he came out guns blazing and swamped the Minister with very pointed questions in the Ntlo ya dikgosi you knew that the eagle has landed. It was always going to be a matter of when and not if General Khama would bring the discussion on hunting into the mainstream of Botswana politics again.  So there is no hiding place for the Ministry. Nor should there be. Sustainable use conservation policy is the policy that is at the heart of Botswana’s approach to conservation. The value of such a policy is that it supports both consumptive and non consumptive tourism. In his very pointed questions, totaling about nine, General Khama clearly indicates that he understands this. And he asks very legitimate questions regardless of how one may feel about them. The import of his questions is that the Ministry must justify and clearly explain this approach to the rest of us. Sustainable use is such a key part of conservation to be given lip service by the Ministry. What has been prevailing is that the Ministry and by extension the hunting industry in Botswana has been rather quite about this industry as if they have to apologize for their existence. Consequently they have been on the back-foot because they have allowed the anti-hunting part of tourism to dictate the narrative. Traditionally, the narrative has been led from outside. What General Khama is doing is to locate it on home base.

Now to some of the questions themselves. They cover the whole spectrum of the debate including, justification for quota, beneficiation to communities, sustainability, decision making processes, human wildlife conflict, equity, poaching, impact on tourism, data gathering and use of data, governance issues and outside influence on decision making. As in a typical game of chess where each piece has its own intrinsic value, each question has its own objective. The main objective however is achieved through the sum total of the questions. Again the objective is to smoke out the current government’s policy of sustainable use. This is aptly summed up in question number 195 which literally pins down the Ministry to explain: :- (i) if there is good evidence of financial benefits that have accrued in the past or are expected to accrue in future, to individual households in the hunting areas, since benefits to local communities are cited as the primary justification for hunting of elephants, lions and leopards; (ii) how Botswana will protect the tourism sector if mature bulls (a key attraction for visitors) continue to decline; (iii) whether communities are fully informed about the long term impacts of hunting out the largest bulls, who provide the highest photographic tourism value; (iv) how community benefits are measured, validated, and transparently reported to ensure quotas actually support rural livelihoods; (v) what mechanisms allow communities or local leaders to challenge unsustainable quota decisions; (vi) what rationale supports expanding quotas at a time when poaching incidents, poisoning events, and rising carcass rations indicate growing pressure on the population; and(vii)what indicators are used to demonstrate that the current quota is sustainable if sustainability is the national goal.

In this question General Khama packs the energy of each of the questions in this series and in fact suggests that some of the preceding questions were some-what rhetorical since he draws some conclusions within question 195.

The point however is that, while the Ministry may feel uncomfortable about this there is tremendous value that all of us must draw from General Khama’s onslaught on the Ministry of Environment and Tourism. We cannot continue to pretend that something as critical as our management and value extraction from our natural assets should be done behind closed doors. The wildlife economy and its relation to tourism is a very important aspect of both conservation and holds the key to economic transformation. A very real danger exists that the wildlife economy can go the way of the diamond economy which has always been a mystery to most Batswana even though it dictated the economic destiny of this country. Many of us do not even know what a diamond looks like. We failed to benefit from the diamond value chain even though it was our key resource. This should not be allowed to happen with the wildlife economy. We may not agree with his opinion on the matter, but we must value his boldness to bring it to the center of the discourse.

This is an opportunity to not only evaluate our institutional capacity to support, maintain and grow this industry into the future. We should be able to have a national consensus about this sustainable use policy based on the confidence that emanates from clear national beneficiation. We expect the custodians of these asserts to demonstrate requisite agility to respond to any challenge, such as poaching effectively and efficiently. If there is even a tinge of doubt that the Ministry does not have the capacity to support this sustainable use policy, it will continue to become indefensible to the detriment of the wildlife economy. So a lot is hanging on how the Ministry responds to General Khama’s questions. The irony is that these questions were scheduled to be asked as the Minister and his team were attending a major hunting expo in Germany. So clearly this industry is worth defending. But we all need to see and feel the tangible value. And so does General Khama.