Between binary- and mono-ontologies: The rewilding practice of Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town Wetland Park

Abstract

This article engages with the scholarships on rewilding, the Anthropocene, and urban nature to advance a case study of urban rewilding in Shenzhen Overseas Chinese Town Wetland Park (OCT Park), the only wetland park located in a megacity centre in China. We argue that the two philosophical underpinnings of rewilding, i.e., the ideal of a pristine baseline and human non-intervention, must be rethought in urban contexts. For one thing, Anthropocenic critiques of the Edenic imagination and the socio-nature dichotomy urge us to envision human-nature interactions as co-constituted and open-ended. For another, urban nature scattered and embedded in complex socio-natural negotiations provides different conditions for rewilding from remote natural reserves. To address these enquiries, we highlight three scenarios in OCT Park: (1) restoration and protection of the wetland; (2) establishment of Nature School and nature education; and (3) disciplining of tourists and the open-ended surprises. This paper reveals OCT Park’s future-focused approach to ecological restoration, its open attitude toward human participation, and the outcomes of human-nature interaction, which collectively constitute a potentially worthwhile model for rewilding practices in urban settings. In doing so, this article adds new knowledge to the rewilding framework by drawing the ontological positions advocated by the Anthropocene literature and an emphasis on urban contexts. Specifically, the paper reveals that human-nature relationships in urban rewilding practices manifest as dynamic negotiations, oscillating between the binary-ontology, which divides humans and non-humans into separate realms, and mono-ontology, which, in contrast, emphasises blurred boundaries and ontological positions.