The work of the Environment and Climate Change Portfolio is focused on supporting the Government of Botswana to realize its national priorities in environmental management focusing on managing the trade-off between income generation and environmental sustainability.

The country’s population has grown, coupled with this growth is the expanded irrigated land, and increased power generation and other amenities. The trade-offs between development and environmental sustainability are becoming more evident in the form of threats to fauna and flora, air pollution and water pollution. Ensuring that resource extraction levels are within the capacity of the environment to assimilate and regenerate is a key concern. Human/animal conflicts are increasingly important, particularly where geographic proximity does not necessarily ensure formal access to benefits. Efforts at environmental management are hampered by a multiplicity of actors including weak coordination capacity, inadequate data, inadequate follow-up on environmental assessments, weak cost-benefit analysis of investments, and limited active engagement of citizens in environmental protection and management. The Environment and Climate Change Portfolio has partnered with Government through pilot projects to deliver on the 2030 Agenda representing a paradigm shift away from relationships based on delivery of activities to the development of shared understanding of challenges, solutions and roles in achieving the SDGs; coordination of multi-stakeholder partners; promotion of broad ownership of progress by all relevant stakeholders; strengthening issue-based coalitions and platforms; and leveraging greater knowledge, capacities and resources.