Prospects for subsistence livelihood and environmental sustainability along the Kalahari Transect: The case of Matsheng in Botswana’s Kalahari rangelands R. Chanda % *, O. Totolo % , N. Moleele % , M. Setshogo w , & S. Mosweu w % Department of Environmental Science, wDepartment of Biological Sciences, University of Botswana, Private Bag 0022, Gaborone, Botswana (Received 22 July 2002; accepted 22 July 2002) Botswana’s Kalahari rangelands have historically supported a diversity of wildlife and a number of subsistence livelihood activities, such as agropastoralism, hunting and gathering. Recently, however, concerns about environmental and livelihood sustainability in the Kalahari have been raised. This paper demonstrates the validity of these concerns using data from research undertaken in the Matsheng area of southwest Botswana. It is illustrated that: (a) Matsheng soils are too infertile to sustain productive arable farming, (b) herbaceous vegetation cover decreases in a reversed decay function towards settlements, (c) the herbaceous vegetation cover trend is inversely reflected by woody-thorny vegetation, (d) despite being a major rangeland activity, livestock production benefits only a minority of inhabitants, and (e) rangelands are no longer the major source of livelihood for the majority. # 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. Keywords: rangelands; matsheng; subsistence livelihoods; sustainability; community-based natural resource management Introduction In general, rural people eke most of their living out of their surrounding environments, through such resource use systems as pastoralism, arable farming, fishing, hunting, gathering or (as is often the case) a combination of these. In rural Africa, this living is mostly at the subsistence level, so that the supporting natural environments can aptly be referred to as ‘subsistence livelihood environments’ (cf. Odada et al., 1996). Because of their assumed close connection to the natural resource base, the viability and sustainability of rural livelihoods depend on the health of respective natural environments, which in turn depends on both physical factors and management interventions. That is, for rural livelihoods to be sustainable they should be well- attuned to their environmental contexts whose intrinsic value and properties should be protected or conserved through management (Blaikie, 1989). In such situations, the *Corresponding author. E-mail: chandar@mopipi.ub.bw 0140-1963/03/020425 + 22 $30.00/0 # 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. Journal of Arid Environments (2003) 54: 425–445 doi:10.1006/jare.2002.1100