The collection of papers in this special edition of the Journal of Arid Environments is a sequel to a Workshop held in Maun, Botswana, in October 2000, on the theme Climate Change, Biodiversity and Multi-species Production Systems in the Kalahari Region. Constituting only about one-third of the workshop papers delivered, this set of articles survived a rigorous peer-review process and are being published as one of the planned outputs of the Maun meeting. Except for the keynote paper by Darkoh which is a review article with a continental purview, the collection is based on research conducted by natural and social scientists within the Southern African Kalahari region either as part of the Southern African Science Initiative (SAFARI 2000) co-ordinated from the University of Virginia in the U.S.A. or of the Kalahari Transect project based at the University of Botswana.