This K4DD Rapid Evidence Review looks at how Botswana’s environmental legislation has accumulated sector by sector rather than as a coherent whole.
Impact assessment is governed by the Environmental Assessment Act of 2011, materially strengthened by its 2020 amendment adding management, waste and rehabilitation plans, tightening review timelines, extending powers of entry and information, introducing conflict-of-interest safeguards and recognising transboundary procedures.
Botswana’s Parliament adopted adaptation and mitigation commitments under the Climate Change Policy in 2021. What the country lacks is an overarching Environmental Management Act binding these instruments to a common set of principles and a single coordinating authority.