Political leadership and non-state actors in the greening of Botswana

ABSTRACT

The global environmental crisis has drawn increasing attention to how state power should be deployed towards achieving ecological objectives. Hence, scholars have debated the form and functions that the state might take within a sustainable political-economic model. The concept of the green state is central to this debate but the concept itself raises further questions about whether and how African states fit into this categorisation. In this article, we contribute to these debates by arguing that Botswana has been greening over time and that the Ian Khama regime took this process to a high level through the hunting ban in 2014. The country orchestrated its greener model of capitalist accumulation and gross domestic growth through the wildlife economy, which is anchored on environmental policies that fuse together domestic and global interests. Between 1966 and 2018, political leaders authorised these policies that in turn shaped power relations in the wildlife sector, particularly between the state and the private sector, to the detriment of local communities.

RÉSUMÉ

La crise environnementale mondiale a attiré une attention croissante sur la manière dont le pouvoir de l’État devrait être déployé pour atteindre les objectifs écologiques. Le monde académique a donc débattu de la forme et des fonctions que l’État pourrait prendre dans le cadre d’un modèle politico-économique durable. Le concept « d’État vert » est au centre de ce débat, mais le concept lui-même soulève d’autres questions quant à savoir si, et comment, les États africains entrent dans cette catégorie. Dans cet article, nous contribuons à ces débats en faisant valoir que le Botswana s’est écologisé au fil du temps, et que le régime de Ian Khama a porté ce processus à un niveau élevé par l’interdiction de la chasse en 2014. Le pays a orchestré son modèle plus vert d’accumulation capitaliste et de croissance intérieure brute par l’économie de la faune et de la flore, qui est ancrée sur des politiques environnementales qui fusionnent les intérêts nationaux et mondiaux. Entre 1966 et 2018, les dirigeants politiques ont autorisé ces politiques qui, à leur tour, ont façonné les relations de pouvoir dans le secteur de la faune sauvage, en particulier entre l’État et le secteur privé, au détriment des communautés locales.

KEYWORDS:

• Green state
• political leadership
• Botswana
• wildlife policy
• power relations
• Basarwa

MOTS-CLÉS:

• État vert
• leadership politique
• Botswana
• politique de la faune
• relations de pouvoir
• Basarwa

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and challenging comments and the editors for pushing us to improve the orientation of the paper. Emmanuel Mogende is grateful for the study leave the University of Botswana granted him to carry out the study reported in this paper. He thanks the University of Botswana and the Faculty of Science at the University of Cape Town for generously funding his PhD from which this paper draws material. The authors acknowledge the support from the National Research Foundation (Grant no. 107804).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Note on contributors

Emmanuel Mogende is Research Scholar in natural resource governance at the Okavango Research Institute, University of Botswana.

Maano Ramutsindela is Professor in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science and Dean of Science at the University of Cape Town. He is the author of Transfrontier conservation in Africa: at the confluence of capital, politics and nature (CABI, 2007).

Notes

1 The Botswana Society is a non-governmental organisation that was established in 1969 to advance knowledge of Botswana in all disciplines through lectures, workshop and symposia on vital questions of national development. The organisation publishes an annual peer-reviewed journal, Botswana Notes and Records.

2 A ‘World Conservation’ strategy developed by International Union for the Conservation of Nature, World Wildlife Fund for Nature International and United Nations Environment Programme in the 1980s as a response to worsening environmental degradation in the global South.

3 Dereck Joubert is CEO of Great Plains Conservation and Great Plains Foundation, a wildlife-based photographic tourism company in Botswana which also has direct links with Wilderness Safaris.