When Anthropocene shocks contest conventional mentalities: a case study from Cape Town

Abstract

Under conditions of protracted reduction in supply and heightened uncertainty, one of the notable responses to the Cape Town drought (2016–2018), was the proliferation of ‘water resilience’ in public and private discourses. Resilience was employed as an explanatory concept and governing tool, signalling a professed transition in the municipality’s understandings to an altered climate episteme – or what they have called, a ‘New Normal’. This article focuses on how public framings of resilience were used by the City of Cape Town to signal divorce from conventional approaches to climate and water. It contrasts conventional framings of a Holocene world, with those of a posited ‘mentality of the Anthropocene’ in order to elaborate this ostensible shift in mentality. Although this case study illustrates how public governors are finding utility in resilience as a term to facilitate explanation of their operating context, decisions and responses, contested and transitional mentalities elaborate why the municipality initially failed to anticipate, perceive and respond the drought. This article thereby highlights the cognitive tensions and practical challenges of transition for professionals patterned by conventional techno-managerial approaches, to a way of thinking more in line with reflexive and adaptive approaches anticipated to be necessary in an Anthropocene world.