Maps, models and changing perspectives

"Yesterday our land wore a green cloth, but now the cloth has been torn off and the flesh of the land is being eaten."- male farmer, Jeldu, Oromia, Ethiopia.

Land degradation is a widespread issue in Ethiopia. The Meja watershed in the Jeldu region is one such example, having experienced the confluence of extreme environmental degradation and marked changes in cultural and religious practices over the past decades. At a Participatory Three-Dimensional Modelling (P3DM) workshop run by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI)– WLE’s lead Center, community members from the 11 kebeles (neighborhoods in Amharic), that make up the entire Meja watershed came together, created maps of their watershed and discussed the changes that they face, and its effect on the community’s future.

To highlight gendered differences in perceptions of land and water resources, women and men worked on two separate models to depict the watershed. Elders from each of the districts worked together to create the legends for the maps, from spiritual sites to religious courts, representing the varied aspects of community life. Local high school students then created models of the maps that had been developed by the participants.

The mapping exercise allowed members from the community, regardless of their social standing to express their ideas about their past, present and future interactions with the landscape. Whether it were constructing the models themselves or creating the maps, students, parents and elders alike shared their collective knowledge, experiences, stories and religious beliefs about the changes that they face in terms of the natural resource base and surrounding landscape. One of the most vital outcomes of the workshop was the transfer of intergenerational and indigenous knowledge such as discussions between the elders and youth concerning rapid, local deforestation and changes in cultural practices.

Participatory mapping workshops can act as drivers of change, assist with land tenure negotiations, formalize indigenous knowledge, and promote better management of natural resources. Furthermore, multiple groups within a community work to generate these maps. These differences in access to, and use of resources can be analyzed and used to better understand how a given group uses the landscape, as well as how they assign value to different aspects of it. P3DM can therefore give the community ownership over the process and outcomes of discussion, and can be scaled up to encompass larger land areas with more participants, thereby benefiting entire watersheds.

Following the work with the Meja community, Liza Debevec from IWMI will be arranging a trip back to provide them with a summary of the information generated during this workshop. IWMI will be looking for ways to continue conducting these workshops and provide support as the local governments and communities are interested in continuing to use participatory mapping as a vehicle to explore local responses to environmental degradation and improve natural resource management.