2.3 Community consultation and engagement
The village level is spatially the lowest statutory administrative unit in Tanzania and as such, provides two key advantages for our participatory research approach. First; at this level, local environmental knowledge and understanding of farm-specific soil condition, water run-off and seasonal micro-climate is the most finely nuanced and second; planning and implementation of potential institutional and community responses has the highest chance of success because those directly affected by the problems are also directly engaged in designing workable solutions (Blake et al. 2018). Previous co-design work with these communities has shown that strong participatory engagement and knowledge exchange has delivered better understanding of the impact of social, cultural and economic drivers on soil management challenges. This approach underpins the model of engagement discussed in this paper. Participatory approaches enable affected stakeholders to jointly define the scale and nature of the problem, find common ground in determining impacts and identify relevant policy mechanisms and levers for reform. Our previous research has demonstrated that good soil management is needed which necessitates farmers and land managers to be empowered to continue to innovate towards sustainable resource conservation. The ambition of participatory research is to catalyse the development of a culture of mutual understanding of potentially competing interests, and willingness to support honest and open dialogue built around shared understanding of the socio-economic and well as the hydrological connectivity of the landscape (Brown, 2002; Moore and Westley, 2011).
Building on previous participatory research carried out with Emaerete community, a workshop was designed to bring the co-produced set of visual materials and associated results back to the community and to use them as a mechanism to explore key elements of local hydrological, biological and socio-economic connectivity in generating soil erosion issues. The workshop was held in Emaerete community, attended by twenty participants from the community and five district government personnel who were further consulted on workshop outcomes. All discussions were conducted in Swahili, with facilitation by Tanzanian members of the research team, and with concurrent translation for English-speaking team members. Discussions were audio recorded, subsequently transcribed and translated into English.
Following a brief introduction on the format of the workshop and the collaborative research activities to be completed, work was structured into two elements:
  1. A short ‘report back’ and review session providing feedback on the wider ‘Jali Ardhi’ project research findings to date, (Blake et al., 2018; Rabinovich et al., 2019; Wynants et al., 2020, 2018) and team learning from community experiences regarding erosion mitigation measures taken to date. Measures included demarcated livestock exclusion zones for gully rehabilitation; and community commitments to plant trees and shrubs; reduce vegetation cutting and change livestock grazing patterns.
  2. Introduction and discussion of the drone survey aerial photo mosaic (one A0 scale copy for group discussion) and A2 scale copies for ease of handling be individual participants); an infographic tool highlighting soil erosion processes; and a set of previously produced local erosion impact photographs.
These visual tools were used by both the research team and participants in multiple ways to illuminate discussion points and trace hydrological connectivity within the landscape. Using visual methods such as photographs and the DEM model has the distinct advantage of creating a shared frame of reference and intuitive understanding despite the complex and abstract nature of the information. Visual methods using photographs and images are particularly helpful in supporting a process of joint learning, negotiation and reflection, around which soil erosion issues and associated connectivity can be identified. Image-elicitation is based on the use of one or a series of photographs or other images in a participatory research context, in order to reach a deeper understanding of something (Harper, 2002). Image-elicitation can stimulate empathetic understanding and draw out connections that might not otherwise be made. In this multi-stakeholder context, discussion alone faces the challenge of creating a trusting environment between participants from widely differing backgrounds and philosophical standpoints, and there is a need to ‘bridge the gap’. Image-elicitation techniques can overcome these differences by offering a shared frame of reference (a composite image of the wider context, or of a particular issue, for example) on which to build trust and through which deeper insights can emerge than would otherwise be achieved through discussion alone (Collier and Collier, 1986).