Okavango Eternal Partnership Renewed for Five Years

The National Geographic Society and De Beers Group have renewed their Okavango Eternal partnership for another five years, announced in New York on 24 September. Botswana’s president and ministers from Angola and Namibia used the occasion to form an alliance across a basin whose water supplies more than a million people.

Okavango Eternal began in 2021 with two stated targets, formal protection for 5.4 million hectares around the headwaters of the Okavango River Basin by 2026, and as many as 10,000 conservation-linked livelihood opportunities over the same period.

By the time the partnership reached its five-year mark it counted 19 research expeditions, 230 carbon-storing peatland sites mapped, 82 community members trained through the Watchers programme and 2,118 livelihood opportunities across the three countries.