Paper short abstract:

Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) are gaining increasing popularity in Southern Africa. Using first insights from our multispecies research in the Kavango-Zambezi TFCA, we will discuss the role of technologies in the design of multispecies landscapes and changing human-wildlife relations.

Paper long abstract:

Transfrontier Conservation Areas (TFCAs) are gaining increasing popularity in Southern Africa as solutions aiming to contribute to the reduction of human-wildlife conflict, the conservation of biodiversity, the protection of wildlife migrations, and to foster socioeconomic development. Two defining conservation approaches for the realization of an integrated land use by humans and wildlife are coexistence and connectivity. On the example of two case studies, which are situated within the world’s largest TFCA, the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area, we will show that the implementation of these concepts is accompanied by increasing use of technologies and the digitization of conservation practices such as the surveillance of shared land use by humans and wildlife or the monitoring of wildlife populations. Using first insights from our multispecies research on human-lion coexistence in Botswana and transboundary elephant management across Botswana and Namibia, we will discuss the role of technologies in the design of multispecies landscapes and changing human-wildlife relations.

How are technologies used and understood by local, national and global actors to implement and control “wilder futures”? (How) is agency redistributed to animals in the creation of multispecies landscapes? Are there new ways for participation of local communities or are technologies leading towards increasing inequality in the politics of knowledge production? And finally, what are local perceptions, adaptions and (counter)visions towards the envisioned shared and connected landscapes?