MAUN – Benson, 54, knows exactly which herbs he can use as mosquito repellents. That is very useful knowledge in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, where he was born and lives, as mosquitoes can transmit malaria and other diseases. He also knows which plants elephants eat to facilitate digestion in their large stomachs.
“When I was little, before the country’s development, we used their dung to make soccer balls. We would take the largest ones, wrap them in wet leaves and let them dry for a few days. Then they were ready to be kicked,” he says. But Benson makes a sad observation: “There was a lot more water back then. It is very important for the animals that live here; without the food that the rain gives them, they have a hard time. They need it to survive.”
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Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014, the Okavango Delta is a vast inland delta, its river does not flow into the sea. The Okavango River, which originates in Angola, flows through Namibia and spreads out into the Kalahari Desert, drains into a plain and produces this delta in northern Botswana’s Ngamiland region, which covers an area of around 20,000 square kilometers during floods. It is a very rich ecosystem where all kinds of animals live: There are more than 450 species of birds here, some in danger of extinction, and 130 species of mammals including lions, leopards, elephants, rhinos, buffalos, wild dogs and cheetahs.
It is also home to a number of local ethnic groups and, because of its tourist appeal, a vital asset to the country’s economy. Botswana is not a poor nation, but a middle-income one that has achieved world-class breakthroughs, such as becoming the first country with a high HIV rate to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of the virus.
“When I was young, I traded what I harvested. I had the minimum possible schooling. Today, for the past five years, I have been driving Mokoros – a traditional boat that many tourists request to navigate the waters of the Okavango – it is much more lucrative,” Benson explains.
Thanks to his current income, he can afford to pay for his two daughters, 17 and 12, to get a much better education than the one he received. They will be able to go to university. The eldest would like to work in the government, although she must pass a demanding exam to do so. The youngest does not know yet what she wants to do when she grows up. “Here, communities live off of agriculture, livestock and now tourism. Thanks to the animals that live on these lands, we have a lot to choose from,” he says.
But these past years, the Okavango Delta has been facing a tough enemy: climate change. In addition to having an inland delta, Botswana has another notable peculiarity: three-quarters of its territory is desert.
A tough enemy
“Climate change projections indicate strong warming in the Kalahari – one of the largest deserts in the world, covering some 93,000 square kilometres – and in Botswana. The warming trends over the past two decades are approximately twice the global average,” says Callum Munday, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford whose work focuses on the dynamics of tropical and African climates. “In our future projections, this increase in temperatures will go hand-in-hand with longer droughts.”
The consequences of climate change have already been felt in recent months in the southern regions of Africa. Perhaps the most notorious example took place in Namibia during the last months of 2024. At that time, the country, which borders Botswana, suffered its worst drought in the last 100 years, an episode that left the country on the verge of collapse.
The death of 350 African elephants was due to climate change.
Almost half of the population faced critical levels of food security and the government decided, through one unprecedented and desperate measure, to sacrifice wild animals, including 83 elephants, 30 hippos, 100 wildebeest and 300 zebras, to guarantee food for every corner of the nation, especially in rural areas, the most affected by hunger. All this in a context of extreme climate crisis further increased by the El Niño phenomenon, which is characterized by an unusual warming of the waters of the equatorial Pacific.
The Okavango Delta itself has also been the scene of such events recently. In 2020, a study by King’s College London found that the death of 350 African elephants (Botswana is home to a third of the world’s population of this pachyderm) was due to climate change.
A team of scientists said that the animals drank water from wells where the presence of toxic algae had increased due to the unusual variation in temperatures; 2019, one of the driest years in recent decades, gave way to another extremely humid one. Events that could repeat in a future not so distant. “The combination of warming and drought may soon lead to drier conditions in Botswana. This would threaten water security, due to the reduced hydroelectric production, as well as agricultural viability,” Munday said.
A nest of diseases
The lack of food or water are not the only negative consequences climate change and rising temperatures can bring in this part of the world. Sikhulile Moyo is a renowned researcher and virologist from Zimbabwe who is based in Botswana and who achieved worldwide fame in 2021 when the team he led identified was the first to identify the omicron variant of COVID-19.
“Climate change means that animals and humans come into closer contact and these microorganisms become more adaptable, acquiring the ability to infect new hosts. And it is here, in these territories of Africa, where one can find the greatest interface between humans and animals,” he says. The expert says that many of the infectious diseases suffered by people are zoonotic (meaning they have jumped from a non-human animal to humans) and that the variation in temperatures can amplify diseases and epidemics.
Changes in temperature allow these ‘bad’ mosquitoes, so to speak, to displace the good ones.
Moyo goes more into details about the phenomenon: “Climate change affects habitats and causes floods which bring with them massive movements of organisms. Ultimately, this can cause viruses, whose main victims are originally animals, to also affect humans. This is what happened with mosquitoes carrying malaria: Changes in temperature allow these ‘bad’ mosquitoes, so to speak, to displace the good ones. And the same happens with those that transmit dengue or chikungunya.”
The expert reminds us that the countries who are the most responsible for climate change are not precisely those that suffer its most devastating consequences. And the data prove him right again: Despite the fact that around 20% of the world’s population lives in Africa, it barely emits 2% to 3% of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the phenomenon affects its lands and coasts in the most virulent form. The Okavango Delta is already proof of this.
