Presentation short abstract

In Gwanda and similar agro-based regions, natural resource extraction fuels economies but sparks conflict. Understanding this requires environmental pluralism, a lens acknowledging competing knowledge, values, and laws over nature.

Presentation long abstract

The ongoing extraction of natural resources remains a key economic strategy in the Global South, but its socio-ecological effects in rural, agriculture-based areas like Gwanda are increasingly disputed. This paper suggests that to truly understand these issues, we need to adopt an environmental pluralism approach. This approach recognises the coexistence of multiple, often conflicting, knowledge systems, values, and legal frameworks related to nature. Moving beyond simple conservation-versus-development debates, this view highlights the complex and diverse realities at resource frontiers. In the Zimbabwean context, state-sanctioned, corporate-driven extraction operates within a modernist framework that commodifies nature, framing it as inert matter for economic growth. This logic, however, collides with the plurality of environmental relations held by local communities, such as those in Gwanda. These include cosmologies that view landscapes as ancestral territories, sites of cultural heritage, and living ecosystems essential for their subsistence farming and spiritual life. The resulting conflict is not merely about the distribution of benefits but a fundamental clash over ontology, what nature is and for whom it exists. Examining extraction through the lens of environmental pluralism illuminates the Global South not as a passive site of resource depletion but as a vibrant arena of epistemic struggle and legal innovation. It highlights how communities articulate alternative environmental futures, asserting plural ways of knowing. This approach is crucial for developing more just and sustainable pathways that respect ecological and cultural diversity.