Ebbs and flows: More-than-human encounters with the Cape Flats Aquifer in a context of climate change

This project is situated in Cape Town, South Africa. Here, fluctuations between abundance and absence of water – as evidenced by the 2018 drought and water crisis – have necessitated new approaches to ontology and epistemology that critically disrupt dominant systems of thought. The Cape Flats Aquifer and its aboveground area, the Philippi Horticultural Area, are the primary field sites. The researcher focuses on the legal battle that has surfaced between various human actors over land and water use to explore how different human-nature relationships emerge and evaluate the social and environmental implications thereof.

The inquiry guiding her research is how the Cape Flats Aquifer can make a case for multispecies relations by examining how it flows or is brought into existence. The study presents various ways in which the aquifer and its aboveground areas are un/seen, assesses whether alternative ways of evidencing the aquifer exist and questions what ought to be part of the aquifer evidentiary if sustainable, adaptive and resilient human-nature relations are to be achieved. Her argument fosters an understanding of humans, multispecies and earthly bodies/beings as relational, multiple, and intimately implicated in each other in the face of unpredictable climatic conditions.