The workshop was jointly organized by the Institute of Development Studies, Mzumbe University, Tanzania (also part of sub-project C03) and the Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Germany.
Organizer: Prof. Mariele Evers, Dr. Britta Höllermann, Dr. Theobald Theodory, Kristian Näschen
Project: A03 Agro-Futures: Scales of variability, human-environment interactions, and patterns in agro-landscapes
Date: 19.02.2019 – 20.02.2019
Venue: Lumumba Complex Hotel at Mzumbe University
How is future made in the Kilombero valley? This was the guiding question for a 2-days workshop, which took place in Mzumbe in February. Aim of the expert workshop was to engage local, regional and national stakeholders to understand their perception of change, their visions for future developments as well as their coping capacity and strategies regarding hydrological variabilities or regime shifts from past and present to future. Around 26 participants represented perspectives from policy makers, authorities and people from academia hereby covering a broad array of expertise and research fields. The objectives were to commonly identify emerging problems and issues which will feed into e.g. hydrological and hydraulic models of the Kilombero catchment and develop a set of possible scenarios regarding the potential future of the Kilombero catchment.
In short, the workshop focussed on the understanding of human-water interactions under change and aspirations for future development. The interactive sessions covered exercises exploring current problems, their causes and consequences in a systems approach, localising hot spots of current and future change using participatory mapping, identifying development pathways applying scenario building technique and weighting sensitive system variables using a multi-criteria approach.
The workshop has been very successful in two regards. First, all participants were highly motivated to engage with the exercises and therefore valuable data could be collected. Second, the interaction between the different workshop participants fosters cross-cutting of ideas and social learning. The workshop, therefore, has been the starting point for further collaboration among the participants but also between the organizers and participants. During the synthesis of results, there will be more one to one exchange and feedback processes with participants in order to achieve enduring collaboration and co-sharing of results.
This workshop was initiated by the geographers and hydrologists of the A03 Agro-Futures sub-project Prof. Mariele Evers, Dr. Britta Höllermann and Kristian Näschen. Dr. Theobald Theodory, Mzumbe University and researcher of sub-project C03 jointly organized and hosted the workshop. Rene Vesper, Ph.D. candidate (supervisor Prof. Dr. Müller-Mahn) for C03, took part as a participant in the workshop.
