Carrying capacity, rangeland degredation and livestock development for the communal rangelands of Botswana

Recent arguments have stated that the new livestock development policy will carry a high social cost, that the reality of range degradation in Botswana has been ignored, and that there is no basis for assuming that de-stocking would decrease the productivity of rangeland. This paper attempts to address some of these issues.Paper argues that confusion in the debate arises from the role of science in providing evidence and proof, conflicting theories of degradation, differences between definitions of degradation, assumptions about thresholds of degradation, and over the estimation of the impacts of stocking policy. Each of these issues are dealt with.