Fjölrit RALA - 05.12.1999, Side 69

MitchaelB.K. Darkoh
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(Republic of Botswana 1996). The lack of altemative investment opportunities may
also have led many people to invest in cattle and other livestock and hence the contin-
ued increase in stock levels.
Rangeland degradation or desertification is regarded as the reduction in land pro-
ductivity as a result of overstocking and overgrazing or as a result of veldproduct
gathering for commercial use (Ministry of Agriculture 1995). Degradation is exacer-
bated by the effects of drought and climate change (Warren and Agnew 1988).
Whilst there is general agreement on these impacts, rangeland degradation in arid
and semi-arid lands in general has become a contentious issue in recent literature (see
for example, Perkins 1991, White 1992, Dahlberg 1994, Dalal-Clayton 1997), with
protracted disputes among ‘experts’ over the resilience of rangelands and their ability
to recover from perturbations (Westoby et al. 1989, Mace 1991). In Botswana, for ex-
ample, where the perturbations include the extreme seasonal and cyclic variations in
rainfall and also fire and herbivory effects, it has been argued that the territory’s eco-
systems (especially those of the Kalahari) have evolved within such a framework;
suggesting that their component plant and animal species, are variously adapted to
persist, that is, remain within the systems, despite the fact that their respective popula-
tion sizes may fluctuate dramatically over-time or show little constancy (Perkins
1991).
The inference, therefore, is that these arid and semi-arid ecosystems in Botswana
(and in particular, the Kalahari ecosystem), by being characterized by recurrent per-
turbations such as droughts, are extremely resilient, and because of this, there is no
desertification or dryland degradation in Botswana. The truth of the matter is that the
arid and semi-arid ecosystems in Botswana are both rainfall - and man - driven.
Through the combined effects of increasing pressure from conflicting land uses (in-
cluding intensive grazing, wood harvesting, veldproducts gathering and crop produc-
tion), urbanization and the expansion of human settlements and recurrent or cyclical
disturbances such as droughts, dryland degradation is occurring in the rangelands
throughout Botswana. As a result of rapid increases in population and accelerated de-
mand for natural resources, the country’s water, vegetation and possibly soil resources
in the limited areas of arable lands (where mouldboard ploughs are in extensive use)
are being exploited at unsustainable levels. Reduced productivity of natural resources
as a result of overuse or misuse constitutes resource degradation and damages produc-
tion systems. Growing human influences and current institutional arrangements re-
strict the effectiveness of traditional adaptive and coping mechanisms. It would seem
that because of the rapidity of socio-economic changes occurring in the country and
the eroded traditional and imposed centralized resource management systems, it has
become increasingly difficult for disempowered local communities to adapt or re-
spond effectively to change in land use dynamics to ensure environmental sustainabil-
ity. The situation has been aggravated by the commodity-biased and growth-focused
policies of the past, and to some extent the present, which are govemed more by the
imperatives of production and consumption than by the principle of environmental
sustainability. Herein are some of the root causes of the protracted land degradation
problem in Botswana and other arid and semi-arid countries in Africa.