ReWilding project

The Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) in south-central Africa is the world’s largest conservation landscape. The EU-funded REWILDING project will contribute to the emerging field of environmental humanities by focusing on the shifting entanglements between people, flora and fauna in KAZA TFCA. The project will employ an ethnographic approach to understand the changing relations between humans and other species, and strive to advance knowledge about refaunation and biodiversity in conservation environments. The project’s field studies will examine how human livelihoods, institutions, social imaginaries and attitudes change under new socio-ecological situations. These field studies will feature six multispecies assemblages each comprising a loose multi-scalar network consisting of different species populations, actors, organisations, and technologies.

Main objectives

REWILDING is an environmental anthropological project contributing to the budding field of environmental humanities. It focuses on the shifting entanglements between people, flora, and fauna in the worlds largest conservation landscape, the southern African Kavango-Zambezi Transboundary Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA). Inaugurated in 2011, KAZA TFCA is a working landscape of conservation par excellence. Its green future is broadcast globally, but simultaneously bears marks of colonial and post-colonial pasts. REWILDING is a unique attempt to grasp changing socio-ecological relations among humans and other species. It consists of six field studies, each of which will have a comparative component and an in-depth focus on one particular multi-species assemblage. The comparative approach examines how human livelihoods, institutions, social imaginaries, and attitudes change under and give rise to new socio-ecological conditions. The second part focuses on six multi-species assemblages (e.g. an elephant assemblage, a Glossina/Trypanosome assemblage, a rosewood assemblage). Each assemblage is comprised of a loose multi-scalar network consisting of different species populations, environmental infrastructures and technologies, and human actors, organizations and social institutions. By pursuing a two-pronged comparative and in-depth approach, REWILDING will advance scholarly knowledge on refaunation and biodiversity in contexts of large-scale conservation. The project is tied into networks of interdisciplinary research on the effects of recent population rebounds among megaherbivores, vectors of epidemic diseases tied to such refaunation, and the socio-economic ramifications of rapidly commodifying diverse flora and fauna. REWILDING is uniquely positioned and purposefully designed to contribute to a better understanding of the complexities of recent large-scale refaunation efforts, and will thereby offer new, empirical insight for the future planning of conservation.

Main results

REWILDING organised several workshops in the research area for dissemination and capacity building. In March 2022 in Katima Mulilo (Namibia), REWILDING held an environmental history workshop with scholars from the KAZA countries. REWILDING participated in organising a workshop on multispecies encounters in conservation landscapes in Southern Africa in Windhoek (Namibia) in February 2023, following which a special issue was published featuring 5 contributions by REWILDING members. A workshop on qualitative methods was held in Botswana in 2023. In September 2024, research results were disseminated in the Okavango Delta. Another workshop is planned for March 2025 in Botswana on human-carnivore relations. REWILDING has developed close collaborations with scholars and their research institute in Zambia (University of Zambia), Botswana (Okavango Research Institute) and Namibia (University of Namibia), as well as with key stakeholders including the veterinary and conservation departments in Zambia, Namibia, and Botswana. Moreover, two workshops on rewilding involving international scholars took place in Germany in February and May 2024. Currently, REWILDING is organizing the publication of a special issue based on the results of both workshops. Two further international and publishing workshops are planned for early 2025 in Germany – one focused on forest and rewilding, and the other one on human-elephant relations. REWILDING has been well represented in international scientific conferences, including at the European Conference for African Studies in June 2023, and the 2024 conferences of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST), and of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). REWILDING members will also participate in the PATHWAYS Europe conference on human dimensions of rewilding in October 2024. Several publications have been published, submitted or being written (see previous section). The REWILDING team as a whole wrote one article on the multispecies assemblage as a research framework, which is in the final stage before publication. Finally, five doctoral theses are currently in progress.

ReWilding

Main objectives

Main results

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