SELIBE-PHIKWE, BOTSWANA – Segwabe Morathi, a retired religious minister, works as a farmer in a village on the outskirts of Selibe-Phikwe, a small mining town in eastern Botswana. He says farming is not easy in Botswana, where a semiarid desert means that the weather is unpredictable. A changing climate has only made rain more unreliable, he says.
Morathi says he has spent precious time ploughing his field with the expectation of more rains, but to his disappointment, the intense heat has consumed all the young seedlings.
Across the country, rain has become less frequent, while intense heat – tempatures can reach higher than 104 degrees Fahrenheit – continues to cause a multitude of problems for both people and industries.
Experts here say that malnutrition and undernourishment that result from unpredictable crop yields leave people with perilous health conditions, such as HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, even more vulnerable. One in four adults in Botswana is HIV-positive, giving it the world’s second-highest HIV-prevalence rate.
While rain in the south varies, Morathi says that the northern part of the country has received a lot of rain. He says that the area – home to the Okavango Delta, where a river empties into a swamp spanning 11,000 kilometers – is a breeding ground for mosquitoes, leading to more cases of malaria. Throughout Botswana, women and children are the ones who are most prone to malaria because they are the ones who search for food, fish in the rivers and transport tourists in their canoes.
Morathi says that Botswana has four regions – north, south, east and west – and that each has different weather, which makes it hard for the government to create a plan.
But the Botswana government has warned citizens of malaria, taught them about it, and provided remedies with regards to climate changes and malaria infections, he says. Morathi says the government has also approved the construction of a new dam, which would help ease the intense heat since moisture evaporating from it will help cool the area.
Climate change experts here say temperatures are increasing and rain is decreasing in Botswana, which hurts crop yields, increases food insecurity and creates health problems for Botswanans. Health officials say malnutrition and undernutrition caused by climate change leave people more vulnerable to weakened immune systems and, therefore, the symptoms of HIV/AIDS and TB, and a higher concentration of carbon dioxide enables primary malaria agents to spread. The government has implemented programs to tackle HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria and has begun to study climate change to understand how Botswana is vulnerable and must adapt.
Botswana is on track to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases – goal six of the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, a U.N. initiative agreed to by countries worldwide to achieve by 2015, according to the MDG Monitor. And advocates say it is possible for Botswana to meet goal seven – to ensure environmental sustainability – if some changes are made.
Meteorologist Dorcus Masisi, principal officer of the Botswana Department of Meteorological Services, says that temperatures have been increasing and rainfall has been decreasing in Botswana in recent years. Records show that the number of days reaching the minimum temperature has been decreasing, while the number of days reaching the maximum temperature has been increasing. Meanwhile, she says rainfall has decreased and become unreliable.
She says the changes in these key climate elements have been negatively affecting agriculture. Studies of two regions in Botswana with contrasting soil conditions both showed declines in the yields of maize and sorghum – Botswana’s primary crops, which occupy about 75 percent of farmland. She says the changing climate has also affected the grasslands and, in turn, livestock, which many here rely on for food and income.
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