Wildlife conservation is critical to Botswana’s international cooperation especially with its neighbouring states of Zimbabwe, Namibia, Zambia and South Africa. Relying on secondary sources of information, and using interpretive analysis, this chapter argues that international cooperation facilitated by wildlife resources in Botswana has not been without challenges. First, there is increased territorialization for wildlife conservation that has earned Botswana some international recognition at the expense of local communities. Second, increased and institutionalized commodification of wildlife resources has attracted exogenous tourism enterprises that dominate and control wildlife conservation and tourism policies. Third, trans-nationalization of Botswana’s spaces through TFCAs has resulted in some loss of state sovereignty over such areas to international actors. Fourth, there is some state making in which people and communities around wildlife management areas have lost their ‘citizenship’ as they are continuously deemed to constitute a barrier to wildlife conservation and tourism, resulting in threats to relocate or evict them. This chapter concludes by pushing for an inclusive legal and policy framework aimed at addressing Botswana’s paradox of balancing between the country’s international environmental agreements obligations and the needs and livelihoods of its people, especially communities in WMAs.

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