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

are left to perform all the traditional livelihood tasks, including those traditionally
undertaken by the males only. This impacts on the local production patterns and the
productivity of rural village households in that, with the absence of many of the
males, less crops are planted and harvested by the remaining female groups, and
less traditional foodstuffs are collected from the Delta. There has been an overall
decline of 35,6 percent in the volume of crops harvested in the Ngamiland region
since 1995 (Republic of Botswana Statistical Bulletin, 2001).
There is also an increasing trend amongst high school leavers in the Okavango
Delta to stay in 'urban' towns to seek formal employment, rather than returning to
their agricultural villages to resume their subsistence livelihoods. This has resulted in
an increase in rural-urban migration levels and a subsequent decrease in the
practice of traditional livelihood strategies in the Okavango Delta.
According to the local survey respondents, 4 of the ten individuals interviewed in
Maun stated that they had moved there from rural agricultural villages, within the last
fifteen years. Five out of the ten individuals interviewed in Shakawe, and two out of
the ten individuals interviewed in Etsa 6 also stated that they had moved there within
the last fifteen years. This urban-ward migration has significantly impacted on rural
households in the Okavango Delta and their ability to carry out traditional
subsistence strategies and produce an agricultural surplus for sale. The growth of
tourism in the Okavango Delta, and the resultant infrastructure developments in the
major towns served to further decimate the already thinly populated rural areas,
leaving fewer agricultural workers and only the very young and old behind in the
villages.
8.2.2 Socio-Economic Impacts of Migration in the Okavango Delta
The socio-economic impacts of rural-urban migration on rural migrants and their
households in the Okavango Delta have been extreme. The rural to urban
movement of poor farming populations in search of improved income earning
opportunities in the Delta has led to an explosive growth in informal housing
settlements in all the major towns. Existing basic services, especially in Maun, are
unable to support this rapidly growing informal population which is therefore forced
to live in increasingly polluted and degraded conditions.
347