Búzi River Basin (Mozambique): Between Crocodile attacks and Sustainable Development

In this article, it was analyzed how the community residing in the Búzi River Basin deals with the issue of human and wildlife conflict, particularly how the population reacts to crocodile attacks, in the context of the poverty in which they live. We argue that given the importance of the Búzi river basin for the livelihood of the local community and the crocodiles, the conflict that derives from the contact between the two species, in their environment, poses a challenge to the notion of sustainable development, which aims to combat poverty and guarantee the balance of biodiversity. In methodological terms, a literature review was carried out and, subsequently, fieldwork was carried out, where key informants were interviewed, with emphasis on local authorities and several households in the Búzi community. The results obtained showed that the familiarity and importance of the Búzi River for the subsistence of the community makes it face daily the risks of crocodile attacks, cultivate beliefs about their meaning, seek traditional mechanisms that it believes can limit their occurrence, and activate mechanisms of solidarity with the victims. However, without adaptation mechanisms for harmonious cohabitation between the two species, crocodile attacks have caused loss of human lives and conditioned the production of agricultural crops in riverside areas, a fact that affects the well-being of the community and compromises possibilities of reduction poverty, advocated by the first goal of sustainable development.