26 Oct 2016

Government has institutionalised a drought management system to avert effects of drought on people’s livelihoods, Minister of Agricultural Development and Food Security, Mr Patrick Ralotsia has said.

Speaking at a meeting with UN secretary general special envoy on El-nino and climate, Mr Ralotsia said government allocated a budget for drought monitoring and management on an annual basis since Botswana was a drought prone country.

He said the elnino induced drought of 2015/16 was intense so much that government budget fell short to sustain both people and the large number of cattle.

“This resulted in Botswana sending an appeal together with other SADC countries for humanitarian assistance,” he said, adding that Botswana had not received any agricultural based humanitarian assistance to date.

However, he noted that the country had implemented some drought relief using national budget through some interventions such as the government declaring the country drought stricken with some agricultural based relief measures being instituted.

Mr Ralotsia said government, through the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, paid 85 per cent to farmers who got guaranteed seasonal loans while his ministry provided 25 per cent livestock feed subsidy.

The government, he added, also introduced input and draught power support subsidy for farmers.

“Humanitarian assistance should be based on the magnitude of the disaster or shock rather than the status of the country. Through the Rural Development Council, we are developing a medium to long term strategy and interventions for addressing draught based on its severity,” he said.

Mr Ralotsia said the emergency response should be timely to save lives of both people and livestock and also to mitigate the diverse effects of shocks and hazards.

For his part, the special envoy, Ambassador Macharia Kamau, said because of climate change, the intensity, severity and the frequency of these weather events were becoming much more severe.

He said this was an unknown thing that had been predicted basing on the way in which greenhouse gases had been pumped leading to the world literally boiling over.

“The weather is reflecting a world that is literally overheating and continues to pump these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” he said.

He said, “unless the whole community is able to reduce this greenhouse gases to the level that the world could cope, the world is going to be caught up in this cycle for the coming 50 to 75 years.

The ambassador stated it was a global event and urged responsible authorities to start buildings and construction of roads in a different way that would conform to the harsh weather conditions.

He urged all responsible partakers to engage all stakeholders and development partners and get them to articulate in specific terms how the appeal would be carried out in specific terms. ENDS