Political leadership and non-state actors in the greening of Botswana

Abstract

ABSTRACT The global environmental crisis has drawn increasing attention to how state power should be deployed towards achieving ecological objectives. Hence, scholars have debated the form and functions that the state might take within a sustainable political-economic model. The concept of the green state is central to this debate but the concept itself raises further questions about whether and how African states fit into this categorisation. In this article, we contribute to these debates by arguing that Botswana has been greening over time and that the Ian Khama regime took this process to a high level through the hunting ban in 2014. The country orchestrated its greener model of capitalist accumulation and gross domestic growth through the wildlife economy, which is anchored on environmental policies that fuse together domestic and global interests. Between 1966 and 2018, political leaders authorised these policies that in turn shaped power relations in the wildlife sector, particularly between the state and the private sector, to the detriment of local communities.