Botswana National Climate Change Strategy 2018.

The National Climate Change Strategy 2018 supports Botswana’s Vision of being a society that is sustainable, climate-resilient, and whose development follows a low carbon development pathway, in pursuit of prosperity for all. Strategy’s Vision is to provide the requisite guidance for Botswana to achieve a low carbon footprint, plus awareness of and resilience to the consequences of climate change. The strategy’s intended timeframe is from 2018 through 2030, given this temporal scope, for each major sector in Botswana, priority strategies are pointed out and then unpacked into four sequential target actions – one each for the years 2020, 2023, 2026, and 2030. Eleven sectors are identified for priority adaptation response, and seven for priority mitigation response.
The Strategy is grounded in an understanding of the relationship between climate change resilience and socio-economic development. The Strategy’s objectives are: Strategic objective 1: To ensure climate change adaptation and mitigation action supports the achievement of Botswana’s Vision 2030 of prosperity for all; Strategic objective 2: To ensure climate change adaptation and mitigation action supports the achievement of current and future Botswana’s National Development Plans (NDPs); Strategic objective 3: To ensure climate change adaptation and mitigation action supports the achievement of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Botswana; Strategic objective 4: To ensure climate change adaptation and mitigation action supports the achievement of Botswana’s NDC, including the GHG emissions reduction target by 2030; Strategic objective 5: To ensure Botswana has a clear strategic agenda on climate change adaptation and mitigation actions, allowing for a spectrum of actors to be involved in implementation. The selection, framing, and description of strategic interventions in the strategy are informed by a graph that outlines the theory of change.
The Sectors identified in the adaptation response are: agriculture; water; human health; human settlement; forest, savanna and woodlot; land use; disaster risk; biodiversity and ecosystem; infrastructure; manufacturing; tourism. The Sectors identified in the mitigation response are: sustainable energy; transportation; waste management; agriculture, forestry and land use; extractive and mining; carbon budgets and abatement pathways; market based mechanism. Strategies aqre also identified for the following cross-cutting themes: gender; education and training; equality and equity; innovation, research and development; communication and knowledge management; climate services; institutional arrangement; resource mobilization.
Among the initiatives and strategic interventions that the Strategy envisages it is relevant to mention: Expand the reach of Botswana’s existing Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) programmes, with a specific focus on increasing resilience in production systems and subsequently production (outcome), the midst of climate change and subsequently improved livelihoods (impact), e.g. job creation and market access; Invest in expanded and advanced agricultural early warning systems across all farming regions in Botswana, this would include integration with ICT and radio-based technologies (e.g. mobile phone alerts) for dissemination of early warnings and climate information services; incentivize the private sector’s involvement in disaster risk identification, assessment, insurance, prevention, mitigation, adaptation, early warning systems, response and recovery, through financial opportunities (such as, but not limited to, allocating resources to purchase innovative and effective climate services and disaster-related ICT products).
To address equality the Strategy proposes that for the review and update of the national school curriculum the discussions should include how climate change affects different social groups distinctly, and how vulnerability as well as adaptive capacity varies amongst women, children, youth, minorities, the elderly, mental health patients, and other vulnerable groups. It also proposes that all sectors shall make special allocation of resources, within the overall programme or project budget, for climate change activities to devote to enhancing the involvement of specific groups of beneficiaries, among which are listed women and other vulnerable groups.