Professor Wame L. Hambira

Prof Wame Lucretia Hambira is an Associate Professor of Environmental Management at the Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources in the Department of Land and Atmospheric Resources. Her duties include teaching, research and external service in the area of environmental management. This includes identifying potential response trajectories that inform policy in line with the global sustainability agenda and the green economy. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Oulu, Finland and an MSc in Environmental Economics from the University of York (UK).

Prior to working at BUAN, Prof Hambira worked as a Senior Research Scholar in Climate Change Adaptation at the Okavango Research Institute (ORI) of the University of Botswana based in Maun from 2015-2022. In this position, her main research agenda entailed: the understanding of social resilience in the Okavango basin, assessing effects of climate change on livelihoods and economy across the Okavango basin and in southern Africa, as well as identifying potential response trajectories to climate change in basin livelihoods and industry.

She previously worked as a Government Liaison and Environmental Policy Manager with Conservation International (CI) where she served as a link between CI and Government of Botswana on matters related to the Gaborone Declaration for Sustainability in Africa (GDSA) from 2013-2015. Her key performance areas then were centred on policy aspects of climate change, green economies, natural capital accounting, REDD+, Payment for Ecosystem Services, CBNRM and sustainable agriculture. Hence her portfolio entailed analysing national and sub-regional policy frameworks to identify gaps in the aforementioned areas.

Prof Hambira has also worked for the Department of Environmental Science, (University of Botswana) from 2004 to 2013 where she traversed through the ranks of Lecturer to Senior Lecturer owing to her research and publications. The key performance areas included teaching and research in aspects of sustainable development, natural resources use policy (including natural capital accounting), environmental/natural resources economics and some sub-disciplines of Human Geography.

She started her career in the public service at the Department of Environmental Affairs (then called the National Conservation Coordinating Agency) from 2000-2004. Her main duties involved among others the review of Environmental Impact Assessment reports and participation in inter-ministerial committees to ensure the incorporation of environmental management issues in policy making and development projects implementation.