Refugia. Keep (out of) these places

Cities can no longer be seen as spaces inhabited exclusively by human communities that give themselves permission to ravage non-human habitats. By losing wild spaces, we all lose refugia and with them the biodiversity necessary for sustainable development and long-term processes of renewal of the planet. Refugia serve not only as temporary shelters, but also provide a chance to implement adaptive change and forge new alliances necessary for a multi-species future of our planet. Urban refugia are located amongst the enormous pollution, unprocessed waste, in post-industrial micro-areas and cracks and fractures within the infrastructure. Despite the unfavourable conditions generated by cities, these refugia help their non-human inhabitants. At the moment, with the influx of new species and the emergence of mutants, the relationships within the existing interspecies communities are becoming increasingly complicated.

In the face of the current environmental crisis, “to survive, we must relearn multiple forms of curiosity”, suggests the American anthropologist Anna Tsing. Interested in the fate of our non-human co-inhabitants, we should ask tough questions about how networks of human–non-human relations are formed within contemporary cities? What humans and non-humans can actually find refuge within the city, under what conditions, and to what extent? Are human habitats really becoming refuges for rare, threatened and even endangered species and entire disappearing ecosystems? Can unwelcome species and underestimated forms of life take refuge in the city alongside humans? Now, as we finally begin to accept urban spaces as ever-expanding and self-modifying multi-species ecosystems, where non-human inhabitants must finally be seen, taken into account and respected, it is crucial to urgently answer these questions.

Monika Bakke