Fieldwork Diary: Kalomo District, Zambia

By Alida O’Connor

I pull up three wooden chairs in the shade under the mop. One for me, one for my research assistant Emelda, and one for the interviewee I will be meeting this sunny morning. We are sitting outside the home of the head woman in the village of Siankwembo in Siachitema Chiefdom, one of the three chiefdoms that make up Kalomo District in the Southern Province of Zambia.

The manager welcomed us to her community, one of the oldest known villages in the district, to conduct interviews and focus group discussions with community members. I’m here to ask people questions about their land use priorities, who makes decisions about natural resource management, and their experiences working with other landscape stakeholders.

All my questions and their answers will feed into the wider aims of the Collaborative to Operationalize Landscape Approaches for Nature, Development and Sustainability (COLANDS) initiative, which aims to understand the possibilities and limitations of Integrated Landscape Approaches (ILA) in practice.

This matters because ILAs aim to bring together different stakeholders from different sectors and scales so that they can try to negotiate synergies and trade-offs for more sustainable and equitable land management. The hope is that improved cooperation can better address interconnected challenges such as food insecurity and deforestation. The concept is well known in the academic literature, but there is little evidence to support its effectiveness and diverse real-world stakeholder experiences.

It was clear to me where my research questions fit within the academic literature. However, after two years of a COVID-19 pandemic-driven desk job in Vancouver, I became less sure how these questions would translate into conversations on the ground.

Fortunately, I had the advantage of being part of the COLANDS initiative with local teams in three countries – including Zambia. This allowed me to hear from colleagues in the country and discuss research questions and approaches via Zoom, while travel remained limited. However, these conversations cannot replace spending time in a place and meeting the people who live there.

Kalomo District is known as the breadbasket of Zambia, with livelihoods deeply rooted in maize and livestock production. To begin to understand the dynamics of the landscape, I will need to talk to men and women, youth and adults, who work as farmers, grow gardens, mold bricks, and find other piecemeal work to meet their daily needs.

After reviewing my interview questions with Emelda to find out English to Tongan translations, it was time to put them to the test and hear what the people of Kalomo District were willing to share. Interview after interview, my insecurities about my research questions began to melt away as people shared their stories.

Community members spoke of changing weather patterns leading to unpredictable harvests and the need for fertile soil and reliable water sources. People explained why they choose to follow some rules and break others. For many, it depended on the level of respect they had for whoever made the rules. For others, compliance depends on whether it affects access to familiar markets (ie charcoal production) and the ability to make quick money in times of need.

Depending on who I interviewed, some questions were more relevant to certain groups than others. This helped me learn about the differences – and similarities – among stakeholders, whether they are men, women, youth, elders, traditional leaders, government departments or NGOs.

Government representatives in the town of Kalomo spoke about the challenges of conflicting policies and managing a landscape governed by both state and customary law. They shared examples of departments teaming up with traditional leaders, community members and NGOs to recover from the recent floods that damaged fields and homes. They also described some of the challenges to working together caused by transportation issues that prevent people from physically coming together; or conflicting mandates from different agencies or departments that have created departments.

Harmonizing policies to align with a clearly defined and sustainable management plan was among the solutions suggested by participants. District councilors were seen as an important and underutilized link between village committees and district departments. All emphasized the importance of clear communication and shared purpose.

The three months I spent in the Kalomo district meeting people and talking to them in person was an invaluable learning experience that I hope to bring back to the science and policies that shape landscape management. I look forward to continuing the fieldwork early next year, this time in the northern region of Ghana.

Each community is unique, making the landscape a complex mosaic of cultures, social norms and land use. I will be curious to see if the landscape I will visit in Ghana has any similarities with Kalomo and how learning from these two places can close the gap between theory and practice.

Alida O’Connor is a PhD candidate in the Department of Forestry and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Alida’s work explores the social dimensions of conservation through themes such as community-based conservation, local perceptions and values, and integrated landscape approaches. She holds an MSc in Resources, Environment and Sustainability from the University of British Columbia and a combined BA in International Development and Environmental Sustainability from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. Her current research contributes to the COLANDS project.