In August 2017, my trip to Jimma was the third since 2015. I have been working for two projects aiming to understand the potential effects of climate changes on local ecosystems and livelihood. In Jimma mountain areas, farmers produce coffee (Arabica coffee) in the traditional, organic way in the forest, and so doing they protect the forest. My role in the project was a mix of storytelling facilitation and quantitative analysis. In facts, through a series of workshops I engaged local farmers and officers into exploring possible alternative responses to the challenges they could face in the next decades, and create “scenario stories” around alternative future outcomes.
Maize fields
the Didessa river, affluent of the Blue Nile, and the riparian forest
Coffee naturally growing as forest understory
This could look easy for an expert, but it isn’t at all for people used to think about their land and resources by a different perspective…first of all not from the sky as in a projected map! Developing the stories had already been a difficult task, and the starting point was making the workshop participants imaging stories about their children’s future rather than theirs!
In the final workshop, I even wanted to show the participants the land use maps I simulated after translating their stories , and discuss with them about potential costs and benefits of each alternative. But how could I make the results of my analyses understandable for the local beneficiaries?
Women group
Men group
To compare the present reality with imaginary futures, I knew that the usual land maps would not be the best option, since they simplify the reality and often represent it with colours that are not so meaningful, while people better understand the landscapes they are used to see everyday around them.. so I needed to use pictures, from the farmers villages areas, edit them and… create the future landscapes!
Well, results could be better with a bit of extra time, but indeed it seems working!!
Followthesigns 
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