ECOSYSTEM-BASED ADAPTATION And Mitigation In Botswana’s Communal Rangelands

By Lorraine Kinnear

Botswana is a territory well known for its beef and diamonds. Both contributors to the Nation’s economy require different players to participate in ensuring Botswana can continuously benefit from the two over the next few years. Even though growing cattle forms the cultural and economic foundation of many communities in Botswana, cattle ranching is being adversely impacted by climate change. Livestock are encroaching onto wildlife areas more frequently in search of water and forage because of rising temperatures and irregular rainfall patterns. As a result, domestic cattle and wild buffalo are exposed to more pathogenic foot-and-mouth diseases and this ecosystem challenge that requires ecosystem-based adaptation.

The Ecosystem-Based Adaptation and Mitigation in Botswana’s Communal Rangelands is a project by Conservation International Botswana (CI) in partnership with the Government of Botswana through the Ministry of Agriculture. The project is funded by the Green Climate Fund and co-financed by the Government of Botswana. This project is aimed at increasing ecosystem and livelihood resilience, in communal grazing pastures that are most affected by climate change; to restore the vegetation through the Herding for health approach. The amount of moisture that the soil can hold will rise with the restoration and management of grazing vegetation. As a result, growing cattle will be more drought-resistant, and doing so will also increase soil carbon and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Conservation International At Work

Conservation International was founded in 1987, operates in 30 countries and has created a global network aimed at protecting nature. The organisation uses science, policy, and partnerships to sustain economies, regulate the climate and conserve forests, oceans and wetlands that provide food and water to people and other living beings on the planet.

In Botswana, the Conservation International office commenced its operations in Maun in 1993, with the aim to conserve biodiversity in the Okavango Delta area. Additionally, it has supported organisations such as Predator Wildlife Program, Cheetah Conservation Botswana, Shorobe Women’s Basketry Building and Cooperative and Letswee Centres for Environmental Education Programme and the office closed at the end of the funding cycle. Conservation International Botswana hosted the Gaborone Declaration of Sustainable Africa (GDSA) from 2017 until 2021 providing technical and financial support.

The most pressing climate change concern for the people of Botswana is the quickening degradation of rangeland ecosystems. Farming, which in Botswana generally refers to the traditional, community raising of cattle, provides more than 70% of household income in the nation's rural areas. Botswana's population has been raising cattle on the country's rangelands for more than a thousand years, but the effects of climate change pose an existential threat to this crucial cultural and economic activity. A cascade of negative economic effects and vulnerability for the nation, particularly in rural geographies, result from pressures on geographic regions allocated for wildlife and tourism, which account for nearly 12% of the country's economy.

Rangelands in Botswana and the people who depend on these ecosystems for a living are very sensitive to current and anticipated climatic changes. Poor rangeland management and climate change are already resulting in significant losses in animal assets, and additional climate consequences might push rural populations into a state of chronic poverty.

Drought and severe storm frequency have always varied naturally, but since 1980, anthropogenic climate change has caused drought severity to rise by 85% and extreme precipitation events by 18%. With the worst drought in decades, 2019 was Botswana's hottest year ever. Thousands of people lost animals due to heat stress and malnutrition. Lake Ngami evaporated completely for the first time in almost 40 years. According to climate model predictions, future temperatures will be higher, dry seasons will last longer, and there will be more frequent droughts and fires. These factors will worsen population vulnerability, accelerate the degradation of rangelands, and increase exposure to extreme events.

Through this, CI Botswana GCF Project, the Government of Botswana seeks to implement a transformational change in the way its rangelands are managed to sustainably support the socioeconomic well-being and climate resilience of its citizens, improve the health of its ecosystems, and lower national GHG emissions. This country's population is heavily dependent on rangelands. In order to restore Botswana's degraded lands and equip the rural population to implement ecosystem regeneration and climate-resilient livestock production for best response to climate change risks and mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, new models of livestock husbandry and rangelands management systems that work at broad spatial scales are urgently needed.

This project’s interventions are intended to considerably improve Botswana's population's capacity to adapt to the detrimental effects of climate change on the nation's communal rangelands. The Project will only work with "last-mile communities" that cultivate land in non-tenured Communal Grazing Areas. To accomplish its goals, it will engage in activities that are holistically created to:

• Strengthen institutions and support systems for climate-responsive planning and management in communal rangelands;

• Lessen emissions and adverse effects on livelihoods through new job deployment in rangeland rehabilitation and improved livestock management; and

• Promote climate-sensitive enterprise development and value-chain investments for transformational change.

The Project will be carried out in three Botswana target regions of Ngamiland, Kgalagadi and Bobirwa (covering North West, Okavango, Hukuntsi, Tsabong, Mabutsane and Bobirwa districts) due to the three areas' high climate vulnerability, as prioritised by the national validation workshop held during consultations.

The regions collectively make up 41.3% (about 240,000 km2) of the nation and have a 2.6 persons per km2 average population density. As a result of the consequences of the drought on traditional agriculture, the lack of other economic options in rural areas, and lack of access to formal markets, poverty rates in the communal lands of the three areas surpass 50%6.7 Although the socioeconomic similarities among the three regions allow for similar approaches to institutional and policy development, the advantages of carbon sequestration will vary among the three ecosystems, with Ngamiland producing the highest returns per hectare and Bobirwa coming in second.

In the implementation of the Ecosystem-Based Adaptation and Mitigation in Botswana’s Communal Rangelands, the Herding for Health (H4H) model of communal rangelands management, which CI and its partners pioneered in South Africa, will be replicated, and scaled up during project implementation over the project 8-year period. This will be in accordance with CI's Environmental and Social Management Framework (ESMF), all Project operations are to adhere to the recognized Environmental and Social Safeguards (ESS).