Living Alongside Wildlife: Risk, Society and Coexistence

Living alongside Wildlife: Risk, Society and Coexistence

As human activities increasingly transform landscapes across the globe, interactions between people and wildlife are becoming more frequent, complex, and contested. While human–wildlife conflict has received considerable scholarly attention, there is growing recognition that coexistence involves far more than the management of conflict. It encompasses diverse experiences of risk, uncertainty, adaptation, care, governance, and everyday negotiation in shared environments.

This roundtable invites contributions that examine the social dimensions of living alongside wildlife in rural, urban, and peri-urban landscapes. We seek to explore how different actors—including local communities, Indigenous peoples, conservation practitioners, policymakers, and wildlife themselves—experience and respond to the uncertainties associated with conservation and environmental change. Particular attention will be given to questions of risk perception, environmental justice, multispecies relations, coexistence practices, conservation governance, and the unequal distribution of costs and benefits associated with wildlife.

Bringing together scholars from environmental sociology, risk studies, political ecology, geography, anthropology, and related fields, the session aims to foster dialogue across species, regions, and methodologies. Through small-group discussions, participants will critically reflect on emerging theoretical frameworks, empirical findings, and policy approaches that can advance more just and sustainable futures for humans and wildlife in an increasingly uncertain world.