This Ramsar designation also represents a major step toward one of the partnership’s key goals, formally protecting 5.4 million hectares around the Okavango Basin’s headwaters.
Amy Redford, daughter of the "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" star who created the festival in 1978, said this year's get-together would be an emotional experience, just four months after her father's death.
Poverty -- and a weak state unable or unwilling to enforce regulations -- has made illegal hunting and logging in protected areas an attractive way to make money.