In Gaborone, as in other large cities in the developing world, individuals try to make a living by engaging in novel occupations such as landfill scavenging. This paper reports on a research conducted in the Gaborone landfill, the largest in Botswana. The study content-analyzed available literature from other countries. It also relied mainly on direct field observations. The discussions on and answers to closed and interview schedules by stakeholders, affected-and-interested -persons, provided the information on the threats and opportunities related to the landfill site and its informal management activities. This on-going case study lends credence to the potential of scavenging in sustaining livelihoods among those who cannot secure employment in the formal urban market. Scavenging tends to be useful although it may hazardous to the informal entrepreneurs. Taking all the threats into consideration, the decommissioning and closure of the landfill seems inevitable, in spite of the apparent short-term livelihood opportunities it provides to the informal sector.

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Based on government and other relevant documentation, this paper explores the conceptual linkage between population, development, and waste management in Botswana and the implications of this relationship for global climate change. Population is increasing, albeit at a decreasing rate. Spatially, the population is becoming more and more concentrated as the rates and level of urbanization increase. Economic growth has remained consistently high. The combined effect of population dynamics and economic development are having a noticeable imprint on the environment in the form of increased waste generation. Poor waste management poses a real threat to environmental sustainability in general and climate change in particular because of inadequate technology, weak institutional mechanisms to enforce regulations, and low levels of sensitization among the public to deal with the problem. Mitigation measures are suggested to minimize the negative effects of waste management on climate change.

This paper investigates the extent to which the differential urbanisation model is applicable to Botswana by using empirical data obtained from periodic censuses, supportive documentary information and observations from personal on-going research on urbanisation and migration. Differential urbanisation refers to the cyclic spatio-temporal growth trends that the elements of human settlement hierarchies undergo, in response to migration. Empirical studies have verified the validity of differential urbanisation in the United States, Europe, India and South Africa. These areas, unlike Botswana, have longer histories of urbanisation, larger population sizes, denser population distributions, and higher levels of economic development. Current research interest is focused on investigating the theoretical applicability of the differential urbanisation model to those countries at the lower end of the economic development spectrum. The rationale and thrust of this paper is to therefore investigate the relevance of differential urbanisation under unique environmental, demographic and socio-economic conditions that pertain to Botswana. Evidence from the paper shows that urbanisation in Botswana has occurred in sequenced phases that, in general, resemble those suggested by the differential urbanisation model in the following ways. First, there has been concentration in the primate city due to mainstream migration. Secondly, there has been fission leading to the fast growth of the adjacent intermediate settlements, partly as a result of deglomeration economies at the primate core accompanied by substream migration. Third, the peripheral regional and rural centres appear to be now growing relatively rapidly, in response to the implementation of decentralisation policies. Copyright (c) 2006 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

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