In Mayotte, the native way to conceptualise the environment challenges the Western anthropocentrism paradigm; humans are not the only inhabitants. “Nature” is always lived and shared — this means that wilderness doesn’t exist — and humans must cohabit with other non-humans seeking for a multi-species balance. Eco-cosmologies, expressed through animist beliefs, Islamic religion, rituals, pharmacopoeia and tales are the tools for maintaining this often conflicting balance between humans and non-humans.
Yet, in recent years Mayotte has become an attractive center for national and international environmental conservation and protection policies. This led to a paradigm shift (Khun, 1999). The environment has become something abstract and scientific, to be protected from humans by putting it under a shrine. Consequently, in the severals environmental protection awareness activities conducted in Mayotte, there is no more space for the local way of thinking about, relating to, and experiencing the environment. Not even for those who hold the traditional local knowledge. Local eco-cosmologies are confined to the realm of irrationality and superstition.
This paper aims to show how in the «post-colonial situation» that characterise Mayotte, sustainability and biodiversity debate needs to take into consideration the local eco-cosmology as an ecological science (Harding, 2008). Secondly, it is intended to show how sustainability should be rethought as a holistic concept that embraces not only the preservation of the environment but the ancestral ecological relationships that communities have with it. Based on a prolonged ethnography in Mayotte, this paper would aim also to highlight the role of anthropologists in sustainability-oriented multidisciplinary projects in being mediators between different ontological eco-worlds.
