ECONOMIC & CORPORATE The absurdity of oil drilling in the Okavango is now very much a reality. Against the backdrop of the Okavango Delta, one of Earth’s last truly wild areas, Canadian company ReconAfrica has to date drilled three major exploratory wells in Namibia, with two more wells planned before the end of the year. Despite the many threats this poses to regional biodiversity and the local communities who depend upon the fragile ecosystem for their livelihoods, ReconAfrica is now also preparing to start exploration activities in Botswana close to the Okavango Delta and the Tsodilo Hills, both UNESCO World Heritage sites. I am from Botswana, and I am very interested in the regional ecology, hydrology, and biodiversity of the Okavango; and how local communities can benefit from long-term sustainable practices that protect the ecosystem and their own livelihoods. Oil drilling significantly threatens biodiversity and the livelihoods of local communities in northwestern Botswana, although it is just one of the numerous threats we face. he other challenges are deep rooted in socio-economic dynamics and include......regional development and urban expansion across the river basin and especially within the Angolan catchment area (where the vast majority of the rainfall that feeds the river system falls);......debilitating levels of poverty (over 75% of the population living in the Okavango River Basin in Angola live below the poverty line)........anthropogenic climate change......illegal hunting.....access to water and many other challenges. While these threats are intertwined and highly complex in nature, the challenge posed by oil drilling in the Okavango is comparatively simple. It is a challenge driven purely by the neo-colonialist greed of a foreign company hellbent on generating profits at the expense of the environment and local communities. And the costs we now face as a result are profound. Beyond the irrationality of extracting hydrocarbons when we should actively be seeking to keep them in the ground, oil drilling has the potential to contaminate localized and regional hydrological systems and destabilize the fragile ecosystem within the Okavango Delta. Campaigners and conservationists fear the proposed oilfield stretching across Namibia and Botswana would devastate regional ecosystems and wildlife as well as local communities. The plans are the latest threat to elephants in the region, hundreds of which have died mysteriously in the past year. Scientists are trying to find the cause of the deaths but believe they may be linked to a rising amount of toxic algae – caused by global heating – in their waterholes. https://www.