the role of tourism in natural resource management in the okavango ...

Panhandle, the Okavango River then branches out to form the Okavango Delta,
which together with the catchment areas of these rivers, is known as the Okavango
River Basin, shared by the three semi-arid countries of Angola, Namibia and
Botswana (Figure 5.5). The Okavango River Basin as a whole takes up around 192
500 square kilometres and is home to about 600 000 people. It has only three
'urban' centres, namely Menongue in Angola, Rundu in Namibia, and Maun in
Botswana. (Mbaiwa, 2002; Talukdar, 2003; Mendelsohn and el Obeid, 2004).
The Okavango River Basin is the fourth largest international river basin in southern
Africa, and the Cubango/Kavango/Okavango is the largest river in the region that
does not empty out into an ocean, and delivers roughly 9,4 cubic kilometres of water
into the Delta each year (Mendelsohn and el Obeid, 2004). The main river in the
catchment area is the Cubango, which rises in the southern Angolan highlands,
flows southeastwards for some 650 kilometres to Namibia, where it forms the border
for some 350 kilometres. The river then turns southwards and crosses the Caprivi
Strip (a distance of 60 kilometres) and then flows into Botswana. The major tributary
of the Cubango in Angola is the Cuito, and all water flowing into the Delta comes
from the Angolan catchment, 45 percent of it down the Cuito and 55 percent along
the Cubango/Kavango (Hitchcock, 2002).
The Okavango River Basin can be divided roughly into three different zones: (1) the
Angolan region, which contains the numerous tributaries which feed into the river;
(2) the middle section, in which the river flows in a narrow alluvial plain up to 6
kilometres wide (e.g., along the Angolan/Namibian border and across the Caprivi
Strip); and (3) the so-called Panhandle region in Botswana, where the river spreads
out eventually into the Okavango Delta itself, where it dissipates (Hitchcock, 2002).
The Okavango Delta itself is a 13 000 square kilometre, slightly conical alluvial fan,
tectonically forced, subject to annual flooding. It is composed of a mosaic of
floodplains and islands, which covers approximately three percent of the total
surface land area in Botswana (Mbaiwa, 2002; Wolski et aI, 2003).
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