Johan Enqvist

Cape Town

Johan is a sustainability scientist studying how people in cities deal with nature that is not behaving the way they want it to. He leads the Unruly Natures project (www.UnrulyNatures.com), which focuses on urban conservation conflicts: situations where people struggle to agree on what kind of wildlife should be allowed in cities. Johan’s academic journey has explored urban environmental stewardship as an expression of human-nature connectedness in settings where the two often seem cut off from one another. He uses mixed and often participatory methods to engage with communities’ lived experiences, surface their stories, and stimulate empathy and imagination. The Unruly Natures project examines people’s lived experiences, attitudes and preferred responses toward urban baboons in Cape Town, South Africa. Using mixed methods including surveys, storytelling, and immersive theatre performances, the aim is to stimulate empathy and imagination in communities that are often plagued by polarised rhetoric, fear and frustration. The challenge is to explore ways to make it easier to live alongside unruly neighbours – human or nonhuman – while respecting the different and often conflicting needs of each group.