Urban ecology and the property rights of baboons

Abstract

This paper examines the transdisciplinary field of urban ecology through a discussion of cities, their literary representation, the opportunism of nature, and urban sustainability. Starting from the premise that too many people squashed into too many cities is a recipe for a massive environmental disaster (the sixth extinction), this paper argues that literature can promote awareness of the benefits of urban ecology. An ecocritical analysis of The reluctant passenger: A novel (2003) by Michiel Heyns shows how this awareness can be promoted without either eco-proselytising or technical scientific discourse. Set in Cape Town in 1994, this rollicking satire on emerging post-apartheid South Africa has a distinctly urban environmental thread. The theme is introduced in the novel's epigraph and unfolds around the legal battle to save the habitat of the baboons or chacmas that live at Rocklands on Cape Point. The story of these baboons is used to support the paper's argument that urban ecology may offer part of the solution to the environmental crisis of the twenty-first century.