Botswana’s environment sector is critical to the country’s development as the economy is heavily dependent on natural resources both for government revenues and for export earnings. The mining and tourism sectors are the most dominant economic sectors, while agriculture is key to the livelihoods of the majority of the rural populations. Resources such as water and energy have recently been stretched as a result of increasing demand as well as natural factors such as prolonged droughts. The country is also highly vulnerable to climate change, which has implications for both the economy and for people’s livelihoods. Yet, the country is also endowed with abundant alternative sources of energy such as solar whose potential is yet to be tapped into.

A key overall challenge for Botswana is how to balance the use of its natural capital to sustain its economy and the welfare of its people across the generations without the depletion of its renewable and non-renewable resources given its fragility and exposure to external environmental and economic shocks. The failure to account for the value of the environment and natural resources often leads to sectoral programmes and policies that are conflicting and potentially maladaptive in the face of changing climates and the global economic realities. These realities create a people-economy-environment nexus that requires response system that enables Botswana to use a holistic or integrated approach in environmental management for sustainable development. As articulated in NDP11, managing trade-offs is key to this nexus, and it requires appropriate policies, informed by data as well as the design of programmes and projects that are informed by research, analyses and dialogue among different stakeholders with different objectives. Despite its excellent record in conservation and economic development, Botswana needs a highly responsive and integrated approach to environmental management at community and policy levels for it to remain on a sustainable development pathway.