Luregn Lenggenhager's project "Curated Escapes and Derelict Landscapes in Times of Climate Change” investigates where the wealthy are retreating from the consequences of the climate crisis. Far-reaching environmental changes caused by climate change are leading to land degradation. Some areas are becoming increasingly uninhabitable. At the same time, the elite are creating exclusive escapes for themselves, from private islands and wildlife sanctuaries to virtual worlds. Starting September 1, 2025, Lenggenhager and his team at the Department of Social Sciences will analyze the colonial historical and racial-ideological origins of such escapes. The researchers want to explore the significance of such places for social inequality and the political consequences of climate change.

Dramatic ecological shifts not only give rise to "Derelict Landscapes" where human life can barely subsist; they also lead to the creation of new landscapes—often envisioned and curated by powerful elites as exclusive “curated escapes”.  Some of these escapes function as safe havens for the wealthy seeking to flee climate-related distress, temporarily or permanently; they can be located in private luxury wildlife estates or conservation areas in Africa, private islands, or off-grid, self-contained refuge in Antarctica, with some even aspiring for outer space. Alternatively, curated escapes can also be visions for saving entire populations fleeing rising sea levels or environmental collapses, such as the establishment of a new partly-virtual nation of Tuvalu.

This project will show that such curated escapes are not only elite fantasies. Rather, they need to be understood alongside land that is defined as—or will soon be—uninhabitable. Such derelict landscapes include: islands facing imminent flooding, such as the coast of Sierra Leone; areas becoming simply too hot to sustain livelihoods; or areas facing other environmental issues like desertification or biodiversity loss, such as parts of southern Africa. While increasing expanses of land are being declared—whether scientifically or merely rhetorically—derelict, not all of these landscapes will be completely uninhabitable, and some of them are being targeted as curated escapes for the elite.

The project investigates the long-standing political and ecological histories of both the creation and the curation of landscapes for elite escape in a number of selected sites, and it investigates how areas are rhetorically defined as inhospitable. This historicises curated escapes and the rhetoric of derelict landscapes, revealing how each is rooted in longstanding, racialised ideologies of settler colonialism, apartheid, and capitalist custodianship. Colonial aesthetics and imaginaries of nature shape contemporary manifestations and aspirations of elite escape, which were often made real through colonial and capitalist dispossessions. The project investigates the relationships between curated escapes and derelict landscapes—in the context of past experiments, present endeavours, and future aspirations. It employs a bold interdisciplinary approach—involving environmental humanities, political ecology, environmental history, and African Studies—which positions it well to understand the dynamics of land and nature appropriation land and nature and the establishment of new, curated escapes intended to save parts of the population from collapsing environments. The project therefore contributes to two of the most pressing societal issues: climate change and social inequality.

Project ID: SNF Starting Grant 2025-2030
Principal Investigator: Luregn Lenggenhager

Contact:
Luregn Lenggenhager, PhD
Centre for African Studies
University of Basel
Rheinsrpung 21
CH-4051 Basel
luregn.lenggenhager@clutterunibas.ch