The Department of Environmental Science was founded, by Professor John Cooke with the assistance of Robson Silitshena, as the Department of Geography of the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland in 1971. The main focus of the programme was the production of the human resources to equip the secondary schools with qualified teachers. This was reflected in the content of the curriculum whose emphasis was on the physical, human, regional, and cartographic aspects of geography. Natural resource utilization and conservation were also meant to augment government staffing requirements. With a staff complement of 4, the Department had 24 students from the faculties of Science, Humanities and Economic and Social Sciences (FESS).