26 May 2025

Poverty has been identified as one of the factors that drives exploitation of biodiversity resources.

Deliberating on the topic ‘Attaining Environmental Sustainability in a Fast Developing Botswana – Case Study of North West District,’ the chairperson of the Fauna Conservation Trust of Ngamiland, Mr Tiego Mpho revealed that there was scientific proof that all over the world, poverty was the number one driver of over exploitation of the environment. He was speaking at the National Bio-diversity day held in Maun on Thursday. Poverty, he said, was the lack of livelihood options citing that in the event of poverty, the environment becomes source of livelihood as a for last resort for them.

“When people want food, they are forced to hunt animals and overharvest plants which can have significant negative impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems,” he added.

However, Mr Mpho said the North West District was the second poorest in the country but the most indulged region with natural capital, saying that was the reason poor rural communities depended heavily on biodiversity for survival, resulting in exploitation of resources. He also highlighted that it was at the height of unprecedented decline in the mega fauna in the territory when the Fauna Conservation Trust Society of Ngamiland was established in 1962 noting that there was uncontrolled hunting at the time and unfortunately, he said it was not driven by poverty but by the people as there was porous borders and poachers from neighbouring countries.

“Back then, there were almost no elephants left in the Okavango Delta when we established the trust but today poverty level is high and the government has introduced the Community Based Natural Resource Management  programme that enables communities living side by side with natural capital to manage it in sustainable manner for their benefit,” he added.

Mr Mpho also appreciated that some tourism operators had embraced the idea of corporate social responsibility citing that a certain Safari Company had shared that in the last 15 years, it injected P62 million to Gudigwa community. He said even though there was a means of generating income,  the money does not really end up catalysing the level of development that improved the quality and standard of living of the people.

Mr Mpho also stated that while the tourism industry in the North West region generated a lot of money, bulk of the money goes to the national coffers citing that hardly there was no money retained in the area to take care of the ecosystem. He was of the view that a portion of the money had to remain in the district to help the communities living adjacent to the wildlife areas to adapt and mitigate against the wildlife and human conflict.

He cited that last year in Morutsha settlement in the delta, 15 lions were killed while at Hainaveld ranches 20 were killed because they were terrorising farmers in the areas. The lions, he said, were from the delta while some were from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve which were protected areas, arguing that killing was not the best solution because the government was promoting conservation of biodiversity and co-existence at the same time. He also expressed a concern that people were altering the behaviour of the elephants by shooting and injuring them.  ENDS