22 Oct 2025

Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Dithapelo Keorapetse, has conveyed his vision of an environmentally conscious Parliament that embraces sustainable practices and supports Botswana’s green transition.

Speaking during a courtesy call by the Executive Director of the 2050 Pathways Platform, an European Climate Foundation, Ms Marcela Jaramillo, Mr Keorapetse said achieving this goal began with the development of an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy, which Parliament currently lacked.

He said Parliament must decarbonise and go green, adding that achieving such transformation required strong political will.

“The past Parliament’s contribution to green energy was just one per cent, despite a target of 30 per cent,” he said.

Mr Keorapetse said that Parliament pledged to elect supportive legislation, scrutinise statutory instruments, and ensure effective budget oversight to shape National Energy Policies.

He further said that Botswana often missed out on green funding and partnerships due to the absence of clear standards, policies, and proper management frameworks.

The Speaker therefore said Botswana  needed to move swiftly to put the right structures in place.

The 2050 Pathways Platform, an initiative of the European Climate Foundation in partnership with the African Development Bank, is to support Botswana in developing its Long-Term Emission Strategy (LTS).

Recently, the organisation held a stakeholder engagement workshop to deepen stakeholder participation in shaping Botswana’s LTS by reviewing, validating and refining the preliminary outputs and scenario pathways towards achieving net zero emissions by 2050, while maintaining economic diversification and growth.

Ms Jaramillo said the 2050 Pathways Platform, launched in 2016, initially focused on  32 major economies but has since expanded its support to other  countries.

She said the LTS strategies were seen initially as how big economies started decarbonising  and how they started supporting the objectives  of the Paris Agreement.

 “Then they started to expand across all countries, because everybody started to realise that there is no economic planning, socio-planning, or development planning that can be done robustly if there is no considerations of climate impacts,” she said adding that many developing countries also came on board and developed the strategies. 

Ms Jaramillo said there was a range of options on the table for Botswana to make strong and robust decisions on key activities that would support the country's sustainable development.

“One important thing, and this has happened in several countries that we have supported, but it is specific now in Botswana, is developing the national development plan,” Ms Jaramillo said adding that Botswana needed to have a clear plan behind, a clear governance and institutional leadership to be at the forefront of international finance. BOPA