Of Forefathers, Mining Companies and Noxious Weeds

Environment Change, Urban Governance and Citadinity in Hwange Town (Zimbabwe)

Joint seminar IFAS-Research / Wits University
Tuesday 6 February 2018

16:00 – 17:30 – First Floor Seminar Room, John Moffat Building, Wits University

Emilie Guitard (IFRA-Nigeria)

The town of Hwange (Zimbabwe), founded on coal mining industry, is located on the border of the country’s biggest protected area, the Hwange National Park. The inhabitants thus live in a paradoxical ecological context, caught between coal mines, mango trees and other natural species introduced under British rule, and the baboons, elephants, hyenas, lions and other wild animals coming from the National Park close by. This presentation is based on the first analyses conducted on ethnographic and ethnoscientific data collected in 2015. We will focus here on the discourses where, in a circular manner, changes in urban biodiversity, the local/national governance and the ways of living as a citydweller in Hwange are intertwined. This specific case could serve to open a discussion on how to address urban governance and citadinity through relations to nature in urban settings.

These diagnostics are built in complex causality chains, associating ecological causes (climate change, increase of the population for some species and of the competition between them and with humans) with economic, political or religious causes. We will focus here on the discourses where, in a circular manner, changes in urban biodiversity, the local governance and the ways of living in a city are intertwined. This specific case could serve to open a discussion on how to address urban governance and urbanity through relations to nature in urban settings.