10 Sep 2020

Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) have signed an agreement to collaborate in capacity development for the conservation and sustainable use of forest and range resources.

Speaking at the signing ceremony in Gaborone on September 9, the ministry’s permanent secretary Dr Oduetse Koboto said the collaboration sought to further strengthen the country’s forestry sector.

He said the event was the culmination of enormous collective efforts which began nearly eight years ago when Botswana and Japan initiated negotiations to join forces in the conservation and sustainable management of the country’s forest resources.

Dr Koboto said over the last few decades, Botswana’s forestry sector had been characterised by deforestation and land degradation caused by agricultural expansion, illegal logging and unauthorised sand-mining operations in forest areas, illicit exploitation of wildlife, unsustainable production of wood fuel especially in fragile ecological areas as well as wildfires.

He said there had been increasing concern over utilisation of renewable natural resources and conservation of plant species suffering from the impact of expanding human societal needs with sophisticated technology at its disposal.

“The growing negative effects of climate change on natural resources coupled with increasing rural poverty require a new ecosystem based strategy with improved governance in natural resource management,” he said.

Dr Koboto said the concerns had become the main motivation for Botswana and Japanese governments to engage each other in seeking practical ways to deal with the intractable weaknesses inherent in the forestry sector.

The project’s overall goal was to optimise the contribution of the forest sector to long term socio-economic development of Botswana by ensuring equitable and sustainable flow of benefits to all segments of the population, he said.

Meanwhile JICA resident representative Mr Ken Yamada has explained that the project was aimed at enhancing Department of Forestry and Range Resources‘s capacity for sustainable forest and range resources management.

He further explained that the aim would be achieved through a master plan for forest and range resources as well as forest fire prevention activities, participatory eco-tourism promotion and other activities in pilot areas in Ngamiland and Chobe areas.

Mr Yamada said through implementation of the project, JICA would be contributing to Botswana’s efforts to achieve  goals 13 and 15 of Sustainable Development Goals.

The organisation had so far supported the department’s capacity development through a number of projects such as training programmes in Japan for 21 staff members between 2006 and 2019 as well as forests products economic valuation expert deployment,  2015-2017, he said.

Mr Yamada all stakeholders to support the department for the success of the project. ENDS