Okavango becomes UNESCO World Heritage site

GOTHATAONE MOENG
Staff Writer | Tuesday December 13, 2011 00:00

The director of the department, Gaogakwe Phorano, said at a press conference in Gaborone yesterday that the department intends to list one site as a UNESCO World Heritage site every two years. The first site to be listed is the world famous Okavango Delta.

'We think we are 80 percent through as far as working on the listing process is concerned,' Phorano said. So far, they have gone through an extensive consultative process and have produced a dossier as part of the listing process, he said. 'We have consulted with 36 villages, members of Parliament for the region and Ntlo ya Dikgosi.We expect to hold a National Consultative Conference to involve any other stakeholders we may have left out,' he said.

Phorano said the benefits of listing tourism sites as UNESCO World Heritage Sites include further marketing the country's tourism, diversifying the country's tourism product as well as involving local communities in the economy of the region.

If it is listed, the Okavango Delta will be Botswana's second UNESCO World Heritage Site, after the Tsodilo Hills, which were listed on 16 December 2001.

The Tsodilo Hills were listed as a site that fulfilled three criteria of the World Heritage listing- being the celebration of human creative artistic skill represented by the rock art, celebration of the continued human settlement of the hills for close to 100, 000 years as well as to acknowledge the spiritual significance of the hills.

Currently, the Tsodilo Hills are visited by between 12, 000 and 14, 000 people annually. The Tsodilo community development trust, in conjunction with the department of national museums and monuments, is in the second year of a P10 million 5-year community project, which upon completion will see a community campsite, a water reticulation project as well as other developments in the village. Diamond Trust funds this project.

The 10th anniversary of the listing will be celebrated this coming Friday and the Minister for MEWT, Kitso Mokaila, is expected to officiate the event. The celebration of the 10th anniversary of Tsodilo as a World Heritage site is a collaborative effort between Diamond Trust, Letloa Trust and department of national museum and monuments.The other sites to be listed include the Makgadikgadi Pans, The Tswapong Hills and Gcwihaba Caves.