Photovoice Project: Seeing the Upemba Landscape through Communities’ Eyes

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What does Upemba mean to the people who live alongside it? What do they receive from its landscapes, and what makes them feel connected to – and responsible for – the nature around them?

These are some of the questions at the heart of a Photovoice project conducted around Upemba National Park in November 2025. Photovoice is a participatory approach that uses photography and storytelling to allow people to document their own realities, experiences and perspectives. Rather than simply being subjects of research, participants become creators of knowledge, using their own images and words to explain what matters to them.

Three communities bordering the park (Kisandji, Kasungeshi and Kyalwe) were selected for the pilot phase because of their close relationship and coexistence with the Upemba landscape. Participants from three generations, including community members as well as active and retired rangers, were invited to document their everyday relationship with nature using disposable cameras. Their photographs reveal a landscape that is much more than a protected area on a map.

For the communities, nature provides essential resources and forms an important part of everyday life. Water is described as fundamental to wellbeing, supporting drinking, cooking, washing and other household needs. Forests provide non-timber products such as mushrooms, honey and roofing grasses, which contribute to food, traditional practices, household needs and income. Agricultural land sustains crops including pineapple, cassava, maize, potatoes, beans and oil palm, providing food for families while also supporting school fees, healthcare, savings and future plans.

The images also reveal the cultural and spiritual dimensions of the relationship with the landscape. Some resources carry knowledge and traditions passed from one generation to another. Roofing grass, for example, is associated with a sacred forest protected by the community because of its spiritual, cultural and ancestral importance. Pineapple is similarly described as part of an ancestral heritage. But the photographs do not present an idealised relationship with nature. They also capture the challenges and contradictions within that relationship.

Charcoal production, or makala, provides an important source of income, yet community members recognize the environmental consequences of continued deforestation; including soil degradation, declining water sources, increased heat and biodiversity loss. One participant used the photographs to express a specific request to the park: to learn more about agroforestry and more sustainable approaches to charcoal production.

Other images point towards opportunities for coexistence. Livestock keeping, including goat farming, is presented not only as a source of food and income but also as an activity that can contribute to reducing reliance on activities such as poaching. Likewise, the agricultural support provided through the park – including access to a tractor – is seen by participants as an example of what collaboration between communities and the park can make possible.

At the center of the Photovoice exercise is therefore a simple but important question: how can people and nature continue to thrive together? The photographs presented here offer some of the answers.

They show what communities receive from nature, what they value, what they remember, what they depend upon; and what they hope to see in the future. They also remind us that conservation is not only about protecting wildlife and ecosystems. It is about understanding the relationships people have with those ecosystems and creating pathways where conservation and human wellbeing can reinforce one another.

Through their eyes, we are invited to see the Upemba Landscape differently.