Botswana continues to make strides to avert desertification through discouraging its citizens from cutting down trees for firewood, and instead, plant trees and stop land degradation.
This came out of a presentation made by Ms Ingrid Otukile, the Deputy Director in the Department of Forestry and Range Resources, during a side event held at the UN Conference on Climate Change’s 27th Conference of Parties meeting (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
The side event was hosted by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Secretariat on 11th November 2022 on accelerating Implementation of the Great Green Wall Initiative in the SADC Region. The objective of the event was also to strengthen networks for cooperation among stakeholders, including raising awareness and build capacity on sustainable land management initiatives and programmes in the SADC Region..
Ms Otukile said her department had set up seed tree centres around the country and facilitates the collection of the seeds, especially for indigenous trees, by communities and schools for planting.
“We are big at promoting indigenous plants, so we plant trees that are accustomed to the dry areas as well. We produce a lot of seedlings through our nurseries, we have 21 nurseries in the country and these seedlings we sell to the communities and sometimes donate to schools and communities so that they plant trees especially in the hot spots where we have identified land degradation,” she said.
The seedlings are sold at a very low price so that the average citizen can afford to go and plant trees. Ms Otukile said her department partners with a lot of organisations, including banks, to ensure that tree planting initiatives are well on board. One particular bank in her country has a policy where every employee is required to plant a tree in November each year. The country’s power utility also planted trees to replace those it cuts when it opens up space for powerlines. Also our power utility, they are supposed to maintain power lines so every tree that they remove to open space for their power line they plant a tree.
The tree planting initiative in Botswana is part of efforts to combat desertification in line with the SADC Green Wall Initiative which seeks to stop land degradation and green the environment.
Ms Otukile said Botswana receives very little rainfall, especially in the south-west and the northern parts, which receive about 600mm of rainfall annually. She said like her other SADC neighboring countries, Botswana experiences deforestation due to many reasons.
“We have communities involved in gathering firewood for energy purposes. We are not big in coal in terms of being used for household purposes even though we have lots of coal deposits. Gathering of firewood has caused a lot of deforestation. Expansion of settlements of towns and cities have also made us make decisions to also secure land from forestry reserves as well,” she said, adding that the country has six forestry reserves located in the northern parts.
Botswana had a project with the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) on land degradation assessment monitoring and through this, has been able to make an assessment of hot spots where there is land degradation. The intention is that once they monitor the land degradation, they can then come up with restoration strategy to plant more tress.
Ms Otukile said the country also ensured that its storm water drains system is well developed to ensure that water harvesting, and water recycling which is done in collaboration with the Ministry of Lands and Water Affairs, is done at the household level.
The SADC side event alongside the COP27 was aimed to contribute to restoring and rehabilitating 240 million hectares of marine and terrestrial habitats in the SADC Region by 2063. The Side event will also restore and rehabilitate degraded lands and biodiversity in southern Africa; mobilize resources for the implementation of GGWI programmes and projects; raise awareness, build capacity, and conduct training on sustainable land management initiatives and programmes in the region; and strengthen networks for cooperation among stakeholders.
It was envisaged that the side event will contributes significantly to Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) by addressing Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought (DLDD), which is a priority for SADC Member States based on high levels of risk and vulnerability. GGWI projects seek to safeguard the livelihoods of SADC citizens (350 million) who face varying levels of threats, destruction of ecological infrastructure, and related water, energy and food insecurity..
The SADC Region is significantly threatened by climate change, manifest in droughts, floods and cyclones (amongst other hazards), limiting economic growth and food and water security and amplifying poverty and other social stresses especially among vulnerable communities.
