Current Issues

The Okavango Swamp remains one of Africa's most threatened wilderness areas because it relies on an external water source.  Of great concern is the survivability of the Okavango Swamp, itself.  The resources the swamp provides not only benefit the indigenous peoples and wildlife, but industry and the economy of Botswana as well.  The people use the waters of the swamp for drinking and washing, fishing and harvesting reeds to build houses.  The wildlife relies on the swamp for food, water and habitat.  The waters of the delta creates vast amounts of electricity through hydro-power plants, provides water for the mining industry and supplies water to major cities in Botswana, Namibia, and Botswana.  And of course without the swamp tourism in this area would not exist.  Although the Okavango Swamp today is recognized as the largest wetland in the International Ramsar Convention, its survival and protection is not guaranteed. There are three major events that could have a major impact on the survival of the swamp--mostly human created.  Tourism and cattle-ranching seem to be the most pressing issues.  Today, the reason cattle-ranching has not spread into all of Botswana's wilderness areas is because of the Tsetse fly.  The tsetse fly carries the fatal sleeping sickness that affects both humans and cattle.  The tsetse fly has also seems to control non-indigenous human invasion of the area--keeping the levels of tourism at a manageable level.  Today, a plan has been established to spray highly toxic endosulphin  to control the tsetse fly populations--but it has been said that this action will cause a catastrophic environmental impact.  The question now is: should we be protecting the environment at human costs or vice versa?  Continued tourism to the area is also a factor that needs to be address.  Increased numbers of visitors to the area could damage the plant life as well as pollute the clear waters.  Limits on the number of tourists to the area have been proposed and it seems to be the best answer. There has also been the concern that continued pressures on the water source in the Angolan Highlands could strain the replenishment of the swamp, causing a decline in water levels and nutrient supplies.  The most recent conflict over water has been with Namibia and the proposal to build a dam in the Western Caprivi region to provide electricity as well as building a 250-kilometer long pipeline from the Kavango River to supply water to Windhoek.  The conflict is not just over water, but the land itself.  The Caprivi Strip, which is a narrow protrusion of Namibia, that is heavily tropical, with high temperatures and much rainfall during December-to-March,  has been the focus of a heated debate.  The terrain of the strip consists of many swamps, floodplains, wetlands, and woodlands.  The Caprivi Strip is the initial zone of flooding of the Okavango River, and as the swamp expands in the rainy season, the Caprivi Strip become an extension of the swamp.  Today, not only are Botswana, Namibia and Angola debating over in which country does  the Caprivi Strip actually lie, but the pressures surrounding the water supply have become increasingly important.  Population growth, mining interests, and increased tourism have begun to strain the resources and put the Okavango Swamp at the head of a heated debate between the Botswana government, ranchers, engineers, developers, tour operators, rural people and conservationists.  The threats to the Okavango Swamp are almost entirely human caused and thus the controversy must be solved by humans--taking into consideration the loss of wildlife habitat and natural beauty by allowing people to overexploit the swamp and its naturally occurring resources.  Botswana, Namibia and Angola all claim the right to control the waters that supply the Okavango Swamp, but in actuality only nature can control the waters--we should leave the river alone and allow it to travel its natural course it has taken for millions of years.