Stories from the Ground: Building a People’s Science

Across the continent local communities are facing the impacts of climate change, soil loss, and environmental degradation. However, the erosion of their landscapes ability to sustain life is not their only concern. Increasingly, residents of already precarious watersheds and peri-urban areas are under pressure from developers and a global environmentalism discourse that too often places global sustainability over local habitability, financial solutions over local innovations. 

People have been left behind. Knowledges lost. Earth processes abandoned. Science co-opted. Hope — not lost. As the Critical Zones Africa [CZA] research teams engage with residents in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and South Africa their stories not only highlight the dire state of African landscapes and the failures of financialized sustainability but point to alternative futures and flourishing’s. 

Reflecting on the ongoing community engagements conducted by the CZA research teams below, we highlight the importance of local conversation and trans-disciplinary scholarship in times of planetary precarity. Weaving together the narratives from the research teams working across the condiment, a clear theme is emerging: The need for, and beginnings of, a people’s science for habitability.

We begin in the Kilombero Valley, Tanzania, where “farming for the mouth” has become “farming for the market”.

The region from the Kilombero Valley to the Rufiji Agricultural Floodplain and Delta is ecologically rich, hosting globally significant conservation areas and vital resources that sustain millions of small-scale farmer livelihoods. However, over the years, ecologies have been translated into financial values, transforming the social biogeophysical relations of the landscape in ways that raise concerns about future habitability. 

To understand how the landscape is changing and identify context-specific solutions, the Tanzanian team engaged directly with local communities, policymakers, planners, and development actors. Through open discussions and group reflections, participants shared experiences, identified emerging challenges, and presented their insights collectively.

As the team listened, a clear story of agricultural commercialization began to unfold. Many elders described the time when agriculture was mainly “for the mouth”. Fields were traditionally planted and managed to feed families and communities. Today, the story has shifted to: “farming for the market”. Farmers are increasingly intensifying production to earn an income. With this new production model, the team learnt that agrochemicals, including pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, along with improved seed varieties, have become common ways to maximize production. As these shifts unfold, villagers spoke about their worries for the future as water gets more polluted, pests and diseases spread, and rains and floods continue to be unpredictable.

Agricultural intensification is, however, not the whole story. The team also engaged with community reports of escalating human-wildlife conflicts. The community reflections highlighted that while conservation policies strongly emphasize wildlife protection, local communities often bear the immediate costs of crop damage and, in worst the cases, death, from the increasing numbers of crocodiles and elephants. 

In the Kilombero Valley, community engagement is emerging not merely as tool for data collection but a space for dialogue, shared understanding, and the co-creation of context-specific solutions.

While Kilombero Valley is dealing with the challenges of increasing wildlife, the Dzalanyama Forest Reserve in Malawi has the opposite problem. Historically, the name Dzalanyama means "full of wild animals," but today, those animals are vanishing as the forest dwindles. Once a dense forest full of wild animals, it is now a landscape where the soil is losing its natural fertility and the trees are thinning at an alarming rate. 

For many families in the surrounding villages of Malingunde and Mitundu, the forest is a bank they withdraw from to survive. But this survival comes at a high cost: the rain patterns are changing, and land that once produced three oxcarts of maize now barely yields half an oxcart because the soil is exhausted. The community is sandwiched between the need for food today and the need for a forest tomorrow.

Recognising the need for change, the Malawi team bought together a diverse group of stakeholders — including young changemakers, local leaders and chiefs, and government officials — to ensure that change is led from within the community. 

The team took the initiative to change mindsets by turning the radio into a digital bridge. They didn’t just broadcast at the community but gave them microphones too. Through the roll-out of Radio Listening Clubs, local members transitioned from passive listeners to active change agents who co-developed and disseminated messages to influence their neighbors. 

By airing stories from elderly people about the loss of a habitable landscape on 21 local radio stations and listening to Forest Champions, former charcoal producers who have successfully transitioned to sustainable livelihoods like beekeeping, the community is beginning to see alternatives. 

One champion shared his transformation: 

"I used to sell charcoal... After realizing the level of deforestation... I decided to quit and find an alternative irrigation farming and bee keeping". 

Through our Radio Listening Clubs, community members began admitting the truth about illegal cutting and, more importantly, sharing solutions. The team has seen a shift from viewing the forest just as wood to viewing it as an ecosystem. For example, some former charcoal burners are now protecting the trees through bee farming. This community-led solution provides a sustainable income while the bees naturally scare away illegal loggers.

The team’s goal is to prove that conservation and prosperity can go hand-in-hand. They aim to move households to more sustainable livelihoods, reduce charcoal production, and draw lessons for better community engagement in Malawian forest management and beyond. Every radio program recorded is a step toward a future where Dzalanyama might once again live up to its name.

In the Central Rift Valley, Ethiopia, Lake Ziway is dying. The lakes landscape is one of stark beauty and obvious fragility. A landscape where dusty fields, eroded shorelines, and murky shallow waters tell a story of stress and disruption. 

The Ethiopian team visited the communities around Lake Ziway (Batu) and Meki town to understand how these landscape changes were affecting people on the ground. Their research has shown that water has depth halved, the pH is rising, and fish populations are crashing, however how this crisis was affecting communities first hand was missing from the story. 

The team engaged a range of stakeholders such as local farmers and fishers, community elders, government officials, NGO’s, researchers, and a representative from the Gender Office. Gathered in a community hall near the lake, older people talked about how they used to swim in deep, clear water when they were kids. "Now we cannot drink it," one person said, "Chemicals and pesticides—it is not safe anymore", they continued. A farmer remembered when families had 40 animals. Now, it is rare to own even one.

Stories of disruption where not all, narratives of strength equally came through. Gadaa leaders have made traditional laws to protect trees and during a drought, people in the same area share food. When the team asked an elder about hope, they said:

 "Yes, we still have hope. We want to bring the lake back to life. We hope that science, tradition, and policy can all work together, but only if our voice is really heard.”

The Ethiopian team are promoting a move toward participatory governance, where communities like Ziway are not only asked for their opinions but also given power. Where traditional leaders are involved in making decisions. And where research helps people who live on the land.

Further South, the Cape Town team have been bringing together local activists, turned landscape innovators, to think collectively about obstacles and solutions to habitability on the Cape Flats.

The Cape Flats is a turbulent landscape bearing the scars of colonial, apartheid, and post-apartheid slow violence. The landscape’s troubles are a result of intersecting crises of pollution, unemployment, infertile soils, food insecurity, unjust developments, sand mining, poor service delivery, and crime. By bringing activists from different communities together the research team have been promoting an exchange of ideas, seeds, and nutrients.

One way this is happening is by taking the community on fieldtrips to farms and community organisations in order to promote knowledge exchange. Recently the team visited Vegkop farm in the Phillipi Horticultural Area [PHA] to learn about agroecology from activist farmer Nazeer Sonday. The visit included hearing about Nazeer’s fight to save the Aquifer below the PHA from the threat of development, the need to engage the youth in farming, and how to grow organic and local produce. Walking Nazeer’s farm presented an opportunity to imagine how to translate his methods of compost production to other sites around the Cape Flats. 

Seeing the potential of the Cape Flats for agroecology and organic local food production, provided an example of how to repair the Flat’s soils in sites like Ma Hazel’s backyard farm. Ma Hazel grows food and indigenous herbs to feed the children in her crèche but struggles with the nutrient deficient soils and the summer heat. Learning from Nazeer about organic compost production sparked ideas on how to redirect food waste from across the city to those like Ma Hazel, whose soils need it the most. 

While re-imaging more habitable futures on a global scale is important, visits to various locations across the Cape Flats have revealed the importance of grounding questions in lived realities and working with those who are most affected to re-think solutions. Here community engagement is sharing soils, nutrients, compost, seeds, and knowledge.

Across all the above landscapes people are dealing with degradation, sustainability contradictions and policymakers who are not listening and responding to lived realities of Africa’s poly-crisis. That’s why the team from The Human Sciences Research Council has been visiting each of the above sites to engage with locals, converse on solutions, and witness the landscape’s dynamics. 

The team recently visited the Kilombero Valley to conduct collaborative fieldwork with the Tanzanian team. A particularly important aspect to their visit was the exploration of how community science and indigenous knowledge find expression in the policy space and how their livelihoods are catered for and protected by policy interventions. 

Reflecting on the processes Dr Konosoang Sobane of the HSRC said: “Throughout the community engagement process, we need to keep track of the co-created understanding of what the teams need to achieve in this landscape, in collaboration with the invited stakeholders.” The visit to the valley gave the team firsthand experience of the region’s agriculture, wildlife corridors, conservation efforts, water infrastructure, and local communities.

This collaborative research highlights the importance of incorporating community knowledge, participatory governance, and evidence-based policy dialogue to support sustainable land use and climate adaptation planning. The HSRC’s partnership with each country site enhances South–South research cooperation and contributes valuable, context-specific evidence to inform equitable landscape governance and climate resilience strategies.