Environmental policy and administrative management

There is an ongoing debate on the degree of land degradation in communal areas. Many rural Batswana attribute range degradation to inadequate rainfall. Molalatau is a drought prone and excessively overgrazed area in eastern Botswana. This project will focus on developing simple assessment techniques that will allow farmers in the affected areas to understand and plan appropriate intervention measures to address land degradation with little external intervention. The project will combine modern techniques with indigenous knowledge.The primary goal of this project is to demonstrate community driven land management practises that could reduce or alleviate land degradation and its subsequent loss of biodiversity in the communal areas. The successful implementation of this project will result in the identification of appropriate intervention measures that could be applied in the semi-arid ecosystems that are the most susceptible to erosion. To this end FONSAG together with the farmers in the project area decided to embark on a project that would identify the causes of land degradation through rapid biological/ecological and social assessment, and explore appropriate interventions.

Botswana