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Side-by side
Fieldwork and Teddy's Energy
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Jamal explains research to workshop participants in one of the villages
Teddy explains the villagers of the imaginary village Mtakuja about sustainable forest use
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Two workshop participants work together on a workshop exercise
Mtakuja's villagers work together to solve a problem
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The outreach
The aim of the Teddy's Energy outreach project is to communicate research findings on forest resources management to six Tanzanian villages in which fieldwork data was collected (see below for more information about the fieldwork that was conducted).
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Workshops
Much like in the country Teddy lives in, it is custom in many Tanzanian villages to make shared decisions together. The village council and other groups, such as natural resources associations or charcoal producer associations often meet and discuss issues together. Therefore, it is vital to communicate research findings in the villages through oral communication and discussions. That is why interactive workshops will be the most important component of our outreach. Fortunately, Vincent Vyamana (see people involved) is an expert on participatory research and is, therefore, skilled in workshop design and facilitation.
We aim to do the following:
(1) For each of the villages, we develop, organize and facilitate a workshop in which they become familiar with research findings relevant to their village. We collaborate with Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG) and Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), who operate and work in the area, to develop our workshops. We tailor the workshop to each specific village in order to emphasize those findings that are of most use to them. Groups invited to the workshop will be the village council, members of associations, such as the natural resources group and, if present, charcoal production associations, as well as charcoal producers and members of the village that are not involved in charcoal production. In total, we anticipate about 30 to 40 people per village to attend the workshops.
(2) All workshops will be highly interactive. Rather than simply stating the research findings, we will develop exercises during which villagers can learn about them in a step-wise manner. We will make use of metaphors to make sure everyone understand the research. Our hope is that this will allow the villagers to better understand the research results. We also hope this provides an opportunity for them to already start thinking about what the findings mean for their village.
(3) Following the exercises, we aim to foster discussions that allow villagers to identify challenges and opportunities in their current forest management and governance system. We hope that this fosters adaptive capacity and thus will help the villagers to further improve their forest management and charcoal production practices.
Reports
Official reports will be written and provided to all villages. In these reports, relevant research outcomes will be summarized and figures and graphs will visualize key results. The reports will mainly function as a reminder of the research. They can be used by the villages during further discussions about their forest management and charcoal production practices. They can also be used by the villages for advocacy purposes, e.g., by showing them to governmental officials. Finally, the reports will be provided to members of Kilosa district, who are in charge of forest monitoring, approve forest harvesting plans and makes sure everyone produces charcoal in line with rules and regulations. We will go through the content of the reports with members of the village councils the district council to answer any questions they may have.
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The Teddy's Energy children's book
If the villagers are interested, printed copies of the Teddy's Energy children's book will be given to their primary schools for the children in the villages. Our hope is that this provides children with an opportunity to learn about sustainable charcoal production in a fun way. We, furthermore, hope Teddy’s Energy empowers children and makes them realize that everyone has the power to protect and restore nature.
The importance of outreach to local communities
"It gives [communities] a chance to evaluate findings and integrate them in their daily lives"
~ Vincent Gerald Vyamana ~
In this video Vincent Gerald Vyamana (see people involved) explains the importance of communicating research findings to communities in which the research was conducted.
Vincent mentions three main reasons to communicate research to communities:
(i) It gives communities a chance to evaluate the research findings and integrate them in their daily lives.
(ii) Communities feel respected and they feel motivated to cooperate with other researchers who come to their communities.
(iii) Researchers themselves are able to evaluate the results of their research and ask the communities questions, as well to come up with novel lines of relevant research to carry out in the future.
Outreach timeline
October 2021
The idea for Teddy's Energy arose and the first illustration was made
August 2022 - March 2023
Hanneke continues to work on the Teddy's Energy book and receives feedback from many friends along the way
July 2022
Hanneke obtains her PhD at the Geography Department of University of Zurich
October 2021 - June 2022
Hanneke writes the first draft of the Teddy's Energy book and continues to create illustrations
August 2022
Mary Ann, Hanneke's good friend and colleague, provides the first feedback on the Teddy's Energy book
March 2023
Hanneke contacts her former colleague Vincent Vyamana to ask if he would be interested to be involved in the outreach
March - August 2023
Vincent provides feedback on the Teddy's Energy book and Vincent and Hanneke begin to make plans for outreach to the six Tanzanian villages in which fieldwork was conducted
August 2023 - February 2024
Vincent and Hanneke work together on the development and organization of workshops designed to communicate the research findings of Hanneke's PhD to the six Tanzanian villages in which fieldwork was conducted
February 2024
In person outreach planned in the six villages in Tanzania
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September 2023
The Teddy's Energy outreach project is launched and Moshy is contacted to ask if she is interested in participating in the outreach
The outreach location
The outreach will take place in six villages of the Kilosa District of Tanzania in which, in total, 2.5 months of fieldwork was conducted. For privacy reasons and to protect our interviewees, the village names will not be disclosed.
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Two 'types' of villages
Three of the six villages are under open access, meaning that charcoal producers can relatively freely cut trees to produce charcoal from due to limited adherence to existing laws, rules and regulations. The other three villages are under communal management, meaning that the villagers themselves govern the forests within their village boundaries based on a forest harvesting plan that is approved by Kilosa District officials. The Tanzanian NGO, Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG), helps the villages to develop a forest harvesting plan and set up a charcoal production and monitoring system aimed at fostering sustainable charcoal production. TFCG hereby aims not only to prevent forest degradation due to intensive charcoal production but also to prevent the further conversion of forests into agriculture, which is the main cause of deforestation in the area. By helping villages implement a legal and profitable charcoal production system, TFCG hopes villages will have a more positive perception of the value of forests.
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The selection of villages allowed us to compare forest use for charcoal production and charcoal producer livelihoods between open access and communal management villages. This provides us insights into the advantages and disadvantages of implementing communal management to protect forests and provide charcoal producers with social and economic resources to sustain their livelihoods.
The first fieldwork trip
The first field trip took place in August 2019. During this trip, we collected data on charcoal production sites, defined as the area in which trees are cut for charcoal production and in which a kiln is build, a carbonization oven in which charcoal is produced. We were guided to charcoal production sites by people from the villages. At the sites, we collected data on the location of the charcoal kilns by standing in the middle of the remains of kilns (i.e., their scars). We also measured the kiln size and the perimeter of the area from which trees were harvested. This data was used to develop a remote sensing method that allows for charcoal production site detection using freely available satellite imagery from the Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 satellites. Previous remote sensing methods relied on the detection of kilns by eye on very high resolution satellite imagery. This only works in clear cut areas, where all trees are cut to produce charcoal, such as the area in the image below.
In the villages under communal management (CB-villages), charcoal sites are spread throughout the forest and usually only a couple of trees are cut in each site to produce charcoal from. Many trees remain and often cover kiln scars. This makes it impossible to observe kiln scars by eye on satellite imagery. Therefore, it was necessary to develop a novel remote sensing method that allows for automatic identification of charcoal sites using machine learning. Additionally, time series of very high resolution satellite imagery are very expensive and rare in many areas in the world. A robust remote sensing method based on freely available satellite imagery allows people all around the world to research and monitor charcoal production. By researching where and how charcoal is being produced, as well as the social, environmental and economic drivers behind it, the effectiveness of different types of forest management and rules and regulations can be studied.
The remote sensing method we developed allowed us to detect charcoal production sites on different satellite imagery with relatively high accuracy. Combining the results of different satellites allowed for more robust mapping of charcoal production sites. In the above figure, the blue areas are those in which both the Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 satellite predict that charcoal production has taken place. The area in the figure is a relatively large clear-cut area, which allowed us to detect the area and kiln scars by eye on very high resolution satellite imagery. The dots indicate the field data collected and kiln scars detected by eye on satellite imagery around the time of the fieldwork and one year after.
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We used our remote sensing method to assess whether charcoal is produced in line with the rules and regulations of the harvesting plan of communal management villages. We also analyzed the impact of social, environmental and economic drivers behind charcoal production in the six villages. We find that more charcoal is produced in villages under communal management than intended. Yet, charcoal production sites are smaller in the communal management villages than those in open access villages and production is not driven by distance to the road or the amount of forest resources available. Therefore, charcoal producers in communal management systems are less influenced by environmental and economic drivers in choosing their charcoal production site. This indicates that the harvesting plan implemented in the communal management villages has an effect on the way people produce charcoal. Yet, not entirely in the way that was intended. Mismatches between the harvesting plan and reality may partially relate to the relatively lower income charcoal producers receive from charcoal production in communal management villages compared to open access villages, which may cause them to produce more than intended in the harvesting plan. As charcoal producers were generally (highly) positive about their communal management system in surveys, our findings may provide the villages an opportunity to further improve their current forest harvesting and management schemes to better fit local circumstances. In open access villages, we find many relatively big charcoal production sites in which clear cutting has taken place. Our findings, combined with insights from communal management villages, may provide a starting point in promoting sustainable harvesting practices in open access villages.
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See this PhD thesis for more information.
A one month field trip
Collecting data in charcoal production sites
We arrived in Dar es Salaam, the biggest city of Tanzania, in August 2019 to visit Tanzania Forest Conservation Group (TFCG). Here you can see bags of charcoal a market salesmen was selling at his stand.
The characteristic landscape of Kilosa district with forests intertwined with agricultural areas, grasslands and charcoal production sites.
Smoke above the mountains from slash-and-burn agriculture, forest land clearing and charcoal production
A charcoal producer explains us how he produces charcoal on his farmland. The small hill on the right is the kiln he build. A kiln is a carbonization oven, usually build close to where trees are cut. Soil and grasses are used to cover tree trunks and branches in order to create low oxygen conditions under which wood turns into charcoal.
On our way into the miombo woodlands of one of the villages to collect field data- in charcoal production sites. We visited in the dry season when many trees lose their leaves.
Moshy (see people involved) walks through a charcoal site we just collected data on. In this site, clear cutting occurred, meaning that all trees were cut in the site to produce charcoal from.
Hanneke (see people involved) stands in the middle of a kiln scar, which remains after charcoal has been collected from the kiln. Using a GPS, Hanneke determines the location of the kiln in order to develop a method that allows for the detection of charcoal sites with satellites. In this site, charcoal was produced through selective cutting, meaning that only some trees were cut to produce charcoal and many remain.
Moshy and Jamal, a Tanzanian colleague, measure a kiln scar. This data was used to determine how the sizes and shapes of the kilns differed across the six villages. There are many different types of kilns, which vary in the efficiency at which charcoal is produced in them.
Four villagers who guided us in the field and helped us collect data. To protect the privacy of villages and the villagers who helped us collect data and participated in surveys, we do not disclose their names.
Sugarcane is a great snack to recharge your energy after a full day of fieldwork
We visited Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) in Morogoro. Here we met with Prof. Wilson Mugasha, who conducts research on forestry and is one of the co-authors of our remote sensing paper. We also met Moshy (see people involved) and Jamal, who were back then enrolled as forestry Bachelor students.
Moshy looks at a sacred spring in one of the villages. In this village a sacred forest was situated in which no one produces charcoal
All people who are recognizable on these pictures have been asked for their consent before publishing the pictures on the website
A 1.5 month field trip
Collecting data on charcoal producer livelihoods
A poster in Swahili created to help explain the research and its purpose to the villages
A schedule created for pre-fieldwork preparations
Extract of the first page of the the survey
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Vincent provides a sampling workshop in one of the villages in which charcoal producers of different income and genders were identified
Two participants of the workshop. Based on this sampling workshop we were able to select a representative group of charcoal producers to interview for our research on charcoal producer livelihoods. During our outreach, we would like to organize participatory exercises like these to communicate our findings to the villages.
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Jamal organizes workshop materials for the people participating in the workshop
Jamal explains research to workshop participants in one of the villages
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All people who are recognizable on these pictures have been asked for their consent before publishing the pictures on the website
The second fieldwork trip
The second fieldwork trip took place in June and July 2020. It was the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and there was much uncertainty about its spread. Therefore, researchers from University of Zurich decided not to join the fieldwork in person to prevent the spread of Covid-19 to Tanzania. Instead, the fieldwork was organized from afar, after ensuring that the field surveys could be conducted given country restrictions, personal exposure and ethical considerations. Safety precautions were taken to avoid the spread of the virus.
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Vincent, Moshy and Jamal, a Tanzanian researcher also involved in the project, carried out the fieldwork. During the fieldwork, one-on-one interviews were conducted with charcoal producers in the six villages. In total, 160 interviews were conducted. The charcoal producers were asked questions about the resources they obtained through charcoal production, such as income but also skills, knowledge, social relations and health care. These resources are called livelihood capitals. We derived data on indicators for five main livelihood capitals (see the indicators below), including financial capital (i.e., financial benefits derived from charcoal production), human capital (i.e., knowledge, skills and health of charcoal producers), social capital (i.e., social interactions and networks of charcoal producers), natural capital (i.e., perceived abundance and sustainability of forest resources) and physical capital (i.e., access to physical assets, such as housing and tools).
We find that charcoal producers in the three communal management (CB) villages perceive that their forest is more sustainably managed than charcoal producers in the three open access (OA) villages. This may indicate that charcoal production is produced in a sustainable way in communal management villages, even though the implemented harvesting plan is not adhered to as intended. The findings may provide an opportunity to integrate the sustainable practices of the villagers in the harvesting plan and adapt it better to local circumstances. Charcoal producers in communal management villages also cooperate and interact more with each other than those in open access villages. This can be seen in the below figure in which each dot represents a charcoal producer and the lines between the dots an interaction. More cooperation and interactions likely allow charcoal producers to help each other out, to discuss about forest management and charcoal production, and to exchange knowledge and skills with each other. All of this may foster further improved charcoal production practices and forest management. During our outreach, we may discuss with open access villages about the fostering of collaboration between charcoal producers in open access villages as a first step towards sustainable forest management. Collaboration can be fostered by setting up charcoal producers associations in which charcoal producers come together and make shared decisions.
Interestingly, charcoal producers in open access villages derive more income per charcoal bag than charcoal producers in communal management villages. This is due to a revenue-sharing scheme under which taxes derived from charcoal production are put in a community fund that is invested in forest management and community development projects, such as schools and water wells. These funds promote social and natural capital at individual charcoal producer level and physical capital at community level. In other words, some of the financial capital of individual charcoal producers is transformed into other types of capital that benefit both charcoal producers and the community they are part of. Yet, the relatively low income from charcoal production per bag in communal management villages may potentially explain why more charcoal is produced than intended in the harvesting plan. As the vast majority of charcoal producers are relatively poor and charcoal is a means to prevent people from falling into the poverty trap, it is of great importance that enough financial benefits can be derived from the practice. During our outreach we aim to facilitate discussions about these results to provide communal management villages a starting point to further improve the revenue-sharing system and prevent potential future over-exploitation of forests.
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See this PhD thesis for more information.
