In Botswana, climate change and variability impact is recognised through related environmental problems such as desertification, frequent droughts and unreliable rainfall patterns. Arable farmers experience low yields and pastoral farmers experience poor range land due to high temperatures and low rainfall. Environmental policies are in place to tackle some of these problems but not specifically on climate change adaptation and mitigation. Although the existing legislation could be modified and some new regulation with implementation strategies be adopted to deal with climate change adaptation and mitigation, specific policy initiatives and proclamations would add impetus to efforts on climate change. These could be facilitated through capacity building of policy makers such as parliamentarians and principal officers in central and local government and then cascaded to lower levels and communities. The focus should not only be on adaptation and prevention measures but more importantly on holistic sustainable development.

Copyright: IIED

Weblink: http://pubs.iied.org/G03023.html

http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/17107IIED.pdf