11 Nov 2021

 Different stakeholders have underscored the need to urgently address issues of land degradation in Ngamiland region. They voiced their concerns during a consultative meeting aimed at appraising them on the Land Degradation Assessment and Land Degradation Neutral (LDN) target project. 

The meeting was also meant to share the project progress and output thus far, as well as solicit stakeholders’ comments. Participants argued that land degradation led to imbalance of the ecosystem, which in turn led to poor soil fertility, poor ground water recharge, deforestation, carbon sequestration capacity and poor food yield among others, all with significant social and economic costs. 

They noted some of the direct causes of land degradation in the district were overstocking, migration of wildlife and human population, illegal mining, climate change and frequent veld fires among others.

 It was therefore important that public education and awareness on issues of land degradation were prioritised to encourage communities to avoid land-degrading practices. 

One of the participants, Kgosi Leretetse Mogalakwe appreciated tireless efforts by the United Nations General Assembly to adopt the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goal 15 that urged signatories to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystem, sustainable management of forests to halt and reverse land degradation and biodiversity loss. 

He implored all to play their role in reducing land degradation adding it was possible to achieve a land degradation neutral world by 2030.

 Earlier on, head of environment from Food Agricultural Organisation (FAO) who is also the coordinator of the project, Dr Michael Flyman explained that the project was included in NDP11 and was fully funded by government. 

He said the government in collaboration with FAO, were leading a process to set voluntary LDN targets associated measures for the country in order to comply with the obligations of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

He stated that the objective of the project was to assess land degradation extent and its status in the country as well as establish land degradation monitoring systems to track changes in land use. 

Climate change and ecosystem consultant, Dr Olaotse Kgosikoma revealed that Botswana was a member of the UNCCD and it was behind in setting the LDN targets while other countries had already done so. 

He also shared the impacts of land degradation and its economic costs associated with addresing it and called for urgent action to curb the losses. 

“As a global community, we need to work together to address issues of land degradation and there is need to look for neutrality because there are some developments that we cannot halt hence the need to compensate the losses elsewhere,” he said.ends