Study site description: Boteti, Botswana

Table of Contents

1. Responsible IP partner
2. General Information
3. Bio-physical description
4. Land and resource use
5. Socio-economic description
   1. Population density and structure
   2. Level of education
   3. Sources of income and key livelihood supports
   4. Impacts of land degradation on the livelihood of people
   5. Major challenges of existing land resource management
   6. Major drivers of main land degradation processes
   7. Institutional and legislative setting
6. Relevant end-users / stakeholder groups
7. Past and on-going projects
8. Cited references

Major drivers of main land degradation processes

The main drivers of land degradation in Boteti include the following.

• The dominant perception among the local population that the climate has become drier and that the land degradation noted above is largely due to the severe droughts and the assumed climate desiccation (Chanda, 1996). Correcting this perception is one of the major challenges for the implementation of sustainable remediation/rehabilitation measures. People need to appreciate the significant role human activities play in land degradation.
• The frequent severe droughts and declining water table.
• Policies that promote livestock production through subsidies.
• Overstocking compounded by the difficulty of selling livestock to the Botswana Meat Commission.
• The extension of arable farming to dryland areas following the protracted failure of floods in the Boteti which previously supported molapo farming.
• The prevailing open access regime on communal land following the demise of the traditional common property management regime.