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Green Borders
As climate change and human expansion redraw Zambia’s landscapes, the invisible border between people and elephants begins to disappear. Communities, conservationists and researchers works to redefine the concept of coexistence in a rapidly changing world.
Green Borders is a feature documentary that explores the impact of the climate crisis through a deeply human perspective, revealing how tradition, community and conservation become essential tools for adaptation and resilience. We tell the story of climate change not as an abstract global threat, but as a force that reshapes everyday life, transforming landscapes, relationships and the fragile balance between people and wildlife. It is a film about borders—between wilderness and human settlements, conflict and coexistence, separation and connection.
Set in Zambia, Green Borders follows the people living and working on the frontline of one of the defining environmental challenges of our time. As the invisible border between humans and elephants begins to disappear, the film explores how coexistence itself must be reimagined in a rapidly changing world.
SYNOPSIS
Livingstone is changing. Once a small town on the edge of the wilderness it has rapidly expanded over the past two decades driven by tourism new lodges and growing residential areas. As the city spreads it is occupying ancient elephant migration routes that for centuries connected Botswana Namibia Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Every night these invisible borders become the stage for an increasingly frequent conflict. Elephants continue to follow the paths they have always known only to find houses schools roads and fences standing in their way. Many of the city's new compounds have been built directly along these corridors making encounters between people and elephants inevitable.
Climate change has made the situation even more critical. Prolonged drought and declining rainfall have reduced food and water inside protected areas pushing elephants toward the city. Here they are drawn by backyard crops fruit trees and open landfill sites that provide an easy source of food.
As tensions rise a small network of rangers conservationists researchers and community leaders is searching for ways to make coexistence possible. They monitor elephant movements study migration routes respond to emergency calls and work with local communities to reduce conflict before it turns deadly. Set almost entirely within the area of Livingstone, the film reveals a city where the boundaries between humans and wildlife no longer exist asking a broader question: how do we coexist when climate change is forcing nature to rewrite its own map?
