Research talks

The University of Botswana, in collaboration with Kwando Safaris, would like to present the first in a series of Research Talks

By researchers for everyone

Lake Ngami fishermen face another eviction

In an interesting turn of events, relocated Lake Ngami fishermen who were told to fish at other areas following the fishing ban at the lake are facing another eviction from those areas as residents complain of swelling sanitation problems.

The Minister of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism, Tshekedi Khama, issued a fishing ban at Lake Ngami for a year following environmental pollution concerns and the fishermen were told to fish at other areas such as the Okavango Delta, Thamalakane and Kunyere rivers.

The fishermen now find themselves in a desperate situation as they are not welcome in the new localities. Residents complain that the fishermen camp on river shores without having consulted community leaders and that they make the rivers very unsightly. Residents have also expressed fear that if the situation continued unabated, the sanitation situation may resemble that found at Lake Ngami.

The Botswana Gazette spoke to one resident, Semumu Samaxa, who resides at Xhobe Settlement in the outskirts of Maun who said the fishermen were a concern and noted that the river is drying and the fishermen worsen the situation as they splash water from the river through the high boat traffic. “These fishermen also scare away hippopotamus from the river forcing them into our farms where they destroy crops and pose danger to people,” he said
Read more at http://www.gazettebw.com/di-mashis-rise-to-the-top/

Managing Water Locally: An essential dimension of community water development

This report explores how local water resources can be managed successfully by community-based institutions in support of state-level initiatives, where they exist. It follows 12 months of close collaboration between Oxfam GB and WaterAid, who are jointly promoting Community-Based Water Resource Management, which emphasises that the potential for monitoring and managing water resources at local or community level should be better acknowledged. In particular, traditional water management practices must be recognised and used as a foundation for the development of future water management strategies. Full report available on OXFAM website.

Botswana to develop policy to protect traditional knowledge

Botswana is developing a policy to protect, preserve and promote its indigenous knowledge and mainstream it into the country's macro-economic framework. Development of the policy will involve identifying, documenting and gathering local traditional knowledge practices from areas including agriculture, health, culture and religious beliefs, and then feeding them into a legislative framework. According to its project manager,Oabona Monngakgotla, "The initiative is intended to bring economic empowerment through benefit-sharing and [providing] royalties to communities rich in indigenous knowledge," said Oabona Monngakgotla, the project's manager. He said that Botswana has realised the importance of indigenous knowledge, such as using traditional herbal medicines to improve health and generate income. Botswana has no specific laws on indigenous knowledge systems. Instead it has isolated policies on natural resources, such as the National Policy on Natural Resource Conservation and Development and the National Policy on Culture, which fit within international frameworks including the Nagoya Protocol, an international agreement to combat biopiracy and share benefits from national resources research fairly.

Conservation Enterprise: What Works, Where and for Whom?

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) recognises that local communities are often best placed to conserve natural resources, as long as they stand to gain more than they lose from doing so. This study draws on the experience of the AWF and other organisations to assess what effect conservation enterprises can have on the livelihoods of local communities and how effective such initiatives are at poverty reduction. It finds that most of these enterprises cannot by themselves take people out of poverty, but can provide less tangible benefits, such as increased investment in health and education, strengthened community organisations and greater resilience in difficult times. The report is available here.

Environment: Worlds Of Water

Water security is one of the greatest challenges of the twenty-first century, and water politics have just become more complicated. Water is the most essential natural resources. It has no substitutes, but many uses - as drinking water, for sanitation purposes, in agriculture, in industrial processes, in electricity generation. Water's versatility makes it coveted by many different consumers, each with their own needs and political heft. Read more on this issue at: http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/files/19682_twt0711waterp4.pdf

Activities at Mokolodi Wildlife Reserve

Mokolodi Wildlife Reserve used to be known more for raising livestock than protecting wildlife. After years of ranching degraded the land, the owner decided to devote the area to protecting elephants, giraffes, impala, kudu, crocodiles, hippos, ostrich, warthogs and various other animals and birds. However, the reserve hasnot stopped producing food. Staff working at the park teach local farmers not only how to conserve and protect wildlife and the environment, but also about permaculture farming techniques that work in balance with the environment. By growing indigenous vegetables, recycling water for irrigation, and using organic fertilizers – including elephant and other wildlife dung – the reserve’s education centre is demonstrating how to grow nutritious food with very little water or chemical inputs.

ORI staff on the move.

ORI Senior Research Scholar, Dr.Barbara Ntombi Ngwenya has recently been promoted to Associate Professor. A graduate of the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work, Prof. Ngwenya taught in the Department of Social Work, University of Botswana prior to joining the Institute in 2003 as a cultural anthropologist specializing in natural resource management and conservation of the Okavango and other regional wetlands. Additional responsibilities have included the supervision of both local and international undergraduate and graduate students.Prof Ngwenya has also published extensively in the areas of sustainable rural livelihoods and development, HIV/AIDS, poverty and food (in) security, community based natural resources management and indigenous knowledge systems and environment. She has presented over 45 research results to the academic community and policy makers around the world including Australia, Canada, USA, Portugal, Italy, Thailand, Korea, Uganda, Malawi, Swaziland and Botswana.Congratulations Prof Ngwenya!

Tsabong Camel Project

The Tsabong Camel project, an initiative of the Botswana Tourism Organisation is attempting to diversify the tourism industry in the country to create jobs and to bring financial and social benefits to rural dwellers. Once fully operational, the project will benefit the communities of Maubelo, Maleshe and Tsabong in the Kgalakgadi District. In addition to the stimulation of tourism activities in the Tsabong area, camel husbandry will be developed, creating exciting entrepreneurial opportunities in the sale of animal by products and other economic ventures. According to Thabo Brian Dithebe, manager of the project, TCP represents one of the many innovative government strategies to move the country away from spheres traditionally associated with tourism.

Assuring Food Security In Developing Countries Under The Challenges Of Climate Change

Agriculture remains the single most important sector for a number of developing countries. Climate change has the potential to damage the natural resource base on which agriculture depends, with grave consequences for food security. However, agriculture is the sector that has the potential to transcend from being a problem to becoming an essential part of the solution to climate change provided there is a more holistic vision of food security, agricultural mitigation, climate-change adaptation and agriculture’s pro-poor development contribution. The scale at which modified production methods would have to be adopted pose considerable challenges. Article available at: http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/osgdp20111_en.pdf

New book: rural livelihoods, risk and political economy of access to natural resources in the Okavango Delta, Botswana

The book edited by ORI Professors, D.L.Kgathi and B.N. Ngwenya and M.B.K.Darkoh from the Department of Environmental Science, University of Botswana, is a compilation of chapters by different researchers( mainly from ORI), and covers a wide subject range pertaining to the Delta. Areas of research covered include livelihoods, indigenous knowledge, government policies on natural resources management, botany, property rights, conservation, land issues and conflict management. The book published by Nova is now available.

Ruthless Exploitation of Nature Endangers the Survival of Indigenous People Worldwide

Millions of indigenous people world-wide are deprived of clean water and adequate land for food cultivation. The right to safe drinking water was only just acknowledged by the United Nations as a human right on July 28, 2010. Unfortunately, the "Water War” in some communities had already come to a bloody confrontation years earlier. Clean drinking water had became unaffordable for the impoverished population for a long time. Details on this interesting issue can be accessed at:
http://www.gfbv.de/show_file.php?type=inhaltsDok&property=download&id=1992

Leading by example-Elephants without borders Community Project

Elephants Without Borders has shifted its focus from wildlife research to a community outreach programme that aims to mitigate human/elephant conflict in Northern Botswana. The elephant Conservation and Community Outreach Farming Project focuses on low-cost, sustainable human/elephant mitigation measures in a now thriving pilot project at Kachikau Tribal Lands in the Chobe enclave in Northern Botswana, a place where human/elephant conflict has been on the rise as human settlemets with their accompanying agricultural fields and livestock expand. The project which is primarily funded by the Ministry of Wildlife, Environment and Tourism, Department of Wildlife and National Parks , the San Diego Zoo, will educate and sensitise farmers to the complexities of human/elephant conflict, the need to stop cutting trees to create farmland, the urgency of habitat conservation and ways to deter elephants from entering their fields. The article is available in the ORI Library.

Impact Investment in Community-Based Sustainable Tourism: Summary of Roundtable Discussion

The Impact Investment in Community-Based Sustainable Tourism discussion brought together impact investment funds, development practitioners, and donors (USAID, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Department of Commerce) to explore ways to work together to establish enterprise-based development that delivers triple bottom-line benefits—economic, social, and environmental. The participants believe the investment in the tourism sector is a prime example of self sustaining development, and weighed challenges and strategies to increasing investment in such projects. Full report available on:http://www.swisscontact.ch/any/resources/pdf/Tourism-Development_Summary.pdf

Graduate students presentations

Yesterday three HOORC Graduate students made their presentations on various topics. The first presentation done by Moseki R. Motsholapheko was titled Rural livelihoods and adaptation to flooding in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, whilst Nqobizitha Siziba focused on the Implications of seasonal flooding of the Okavango Delta floodplains on microinvertebrates and juvenile fish production. Lastly, Gaolathe Tsheboeng 's presentation was on the Relationship between highflood regime and soil nutrient status in floodplain vegetation communities in the Okavango Delta, Botswana.

Flood Pulsed Wetlands International Symposium: Day 4

Some of the advantages of monitoring include the detection and understanding of environmental changes, and the maintenance of healthy ecosystem services. Monitoring should be done in wetlands to aid amongst other factors the evaluation of mitigation projects and to encourage wiser watershed planning, according to A.W.McKay from the University College London in his presentation at the plenary session.Techniques to be used include models like MAGIC( Model of Acidification of groundwater in catchments), palaeoecology for wetlands, peats and lakes. He concluded that the importance of this exercise has been recognised as enshrined in international conventions like the Oslo Protocol .On poverty and sustainable tourism, Drs Mbaiwa and Barbara Ngwenya showed how tourism in Okavango Delta has not made a dent on the poverty levels of the local people in Ngamiland. These levels have remained unacceptably high extremely high, despite the introduction of Community Based Natural Resource Management. Paucity of data in the management of ephemeral rivers remains one the biggest challenges faced. This is according to K.Schachtschneider (CSIR) in her presentation, "Neglected and difficult cousins of the river spectrum: ensuring ecosystem integrity and sustainable use of ephemeral rivers."

Poverty in Focus - Indigenising Development

The publication offers a thought-provoking analysis on the concept of development and how indigenous peoples understand and live with this concept. Among the various social groups that have been historically excluded, indigenous peoples comprise one that offers great challenges to development. Although their assimilation has been a goal of the national societies that engulfed them, it is disputable whether indigenous peoples desire the type of social inclusion that development, in its many forms, can produce. At the same time, development seems irreversible, and resistance to it might have consequences far more adverse than those brought by acceptance. The best way to overcome the challenges seems to be to indigenise development: to put it to work on behalf of indigenous peoples instead of putting them to work for a model of development that is not only alien to them but that frequently does violence to their culture. For more on the publication visit the UNDP website.

The jumbos and the chilli pepper

Farmers in the Okavango, Chobe and central Botswana have discovered an ingenious solution to escalating human/elephant conflict in Botswana, the use of chilli powder to get rid of problematic elephants out of their crop fields. Farmers in these areas are given chilli pepper seeds to plant and upon harvest the chilli pepper fruits are air dried and ground to provide powder for imminent action against crop raiding elephants. The use of chilli pepper as a repellent and a means to reduce the increasingly high human/elephant conflict in Botswana started in 2005 following visits to community based projects in Zambia. This practice received remarkable approval from the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism who subsequently sponsored the fist training of local farmers in 2005 in Gumare. Since elephants are very sensitive to smells their highly sensitive olfactory receptors are greatly irritated by the chilli pepper.

Community management of natural resources in Africa: Impacts, experiences and future directions

For more than twenty years now, community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) has been viewed in many different parts of Africa as a strategy for rural development, local empowerment, and conservation. Led by new ideas about the merits of decentralized, collective resource governance regimes, and creative field experiments such as Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE, these community-based approaches evolved in a wide range of ecological, political, and social contexts across Africa. This review provides an unprecedented pan-African synthesis of CBNRM, drawing on multiple authors and a wide range of documented experiences from Southern, Eastern, Western and Central Africa. The review discusses the degree to which CBNRM has met poverty alleviation, economic development and nature conservation objectives. In its concluding chapter, the report suggests a way forward for strengthening CBNRM and addressing key challenges in the years ahead. See:http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/17503IIED.pdf

Web based community based GIS applications

As resource managers search for strategies to meet the challenges posed by intense competition for scarce local resources, the implementation of Community-based GIS applications have become widespread. Besides mapping, the Participatory GIS (PGIS) projects create a peaceful medium for community groups and public officials to meet, exchange views and also learn to develop trust for each other. However, PGIS projects face many problems including the lack of basic supporting infrastructure and services. The adoption of the Internet as a platform for PGIS applications therefore raises concerns about the future of PGIS projects. While the Internet may open the participatory process, it can also hinder participation among local groups. In an era when PGIS applications have become important in the management of local resources, there is an urgent need to examine implications of the On-line PGIS project. Accordingly, in their paper, Dr. Peter Kyem and Dr. James Saku assess the potential benefits and drawbacks of on-line PGIS applications within local communities. Full report available on
http://participatorygis.blogspot.com/2009/09/web-based-gis-and-future-of.html