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Income and Expenditure Survey, a new SAM for 2002/2003 was constructed for Botswana (Thurlow
2006). This basic SAM has been expanded to analyse economic activities in the Okavango Delta for
our study. A detailed description of the SAM framework, our Ramsar site SAM model, and the
mathematical model used for calculations is provided in Appendix 5.
3.4.4 Natural asset value of the Okavango Delta
The approach used in this study is aimed at making the values estimated compatible with the system
of national accounts used in Botswana. As a supplement to the national accounts Botswana has
developed a number of natural resource accounts (NRA) for various natural assets such as water and
minerals. Natural resources are not conventionally included as assets in the national accounts, but
the NRA supplementary data which is very useful to assist with sustainable development planning.
Botswana’s NRA programme follows the approach espoused by the UN (UN, EC, IMF, OECD & WB
2003), described by Lange et al. (2003). NRA consist of two components, the production or flow
accounts, and the asset accounts. The production accounts measure the use value, in terms of the
GNP contribution, of the natural resources each year, and as such are normally included in the
national accounts. The direct economic value of the delta described above represents the production
accounts for 2005 for the natural resources of the Okavango Delta. These show the annual resource
rents generated by each activity. The asset accounts for natural resources measure the value of the
natural resource stocks as capital asset. These are not normally included in the national accounts,
which take account only of owned or produced capital.
In the NRA system of the UN, EC, IMF, OECD & WB (2003), natural assets are valued according to
the predicted flow of economic rent (resource rent) from the asset base. Only those future rents that
are feasible, given economic and policy constraints in the national context are included. NRA are
commonly developed for individual resources, such as fish wildlife and forests, to help with sectoral
planning. However, they can also be approached from the point of view of land accounts or
ecosystem accounts (Weber 2006). We have used this approach to value the natural asset value of
the Ramsar site and the wetland. Thus we have made predictions of the future likely streams of
resource rents from each activity and discounted these streams to get asset value. These were
calculated from enterprise models, using a fixed 30 year time span for the analysis.
3.5 Analysis of management scenarios
Available planning information and stakeholder opinions on the main issues in the study area were
reviewed and a list of simple scenarios was compiled in order to examine the potential impacts of
different scenarios on the economic value of the study area. This was conducted at an extremely
coarse scale. The biophysical changes under the different scenarios were estimated, and the impacts
of these changes were calculated on the basis of simple assumptions on the relationships between
resource characteristics and value.
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