Desertification in Botswana

      Desertification is a certain type of land degeneration were dry land slowly becomes more arid and usually lose its bodies of water, vegetation and wild life. It is caused by climate change and human activities like pumping water and the overuse of soil.


    Botswana is a semi arid to arid country in the Kalahari region in South Africa. Botswana is drought prone and it is difficult to have a good idea of how the country looks like because there are only fifty data points. At one point it is dry and arid while the other will be in a thick forest. Botswana gets around a minimum of 250 mm of rain in the south west and a maximum of 650 mm of rain in the north east. Desertification is naturally very common in these countries like Botswana because of the already dry climate and climate change with accelerated soil erosion by wind is increasing its rate.


     Botswana, in terms of desertification is the most seriously effected countries in the Kalahari region of southern Africa. There are many human factors to deforestation. these include overstocking, sheet-washing and gullying and large scale vegetation depletion and changes. There is lots of pressure of commercial exploitation of a very fragile ecosystem owing to the increasing pressure on already crowded communal grazing areas in the east. Cattle plays an important role in the economy. 77% of the country is used for grazing and there is still not enough food for the cattle so the government imports cattle food. Since drought is very common and since the rain patterns are very predictable Botswana started to depend on ground water because of the increasing technology. Now 75% of the people and animals are dependent on ground water up to 100,000 million cubic meters of water with only 1% rechargeable by rain fall.



   There are quite a few challenges to stopping the spread of desertification.
- lack of community knowledge
- lack of space for infrastructure and people
- the need to increase agricultural land in the expense of forests
- climate change and frequent droughts
But there are some steps that people in Botswana are taking to help stop desertification 
-nurseries 20 producing 5 hectares of baby trees.
- 52 5 hectare woodlots and plantations
- sand dune stabilization
- reclaiming gullies and Dongas