SPACES organized a three-day workshop with the title “Using the future to make better decisions in the present” at Raphael’s hotel in Pemba, Mozambique, from 15 to 17 September 2015, which gathered a wide range of organizations including experts in poverty alleviation and sustainable resource management from government, community organizations, nongovernmental organizations and conservation and education sectors in Cabo Delgado.

The workshop aimed to:

1) Engage stakeholders in the findings from the SPACES project.

2) Explore how human well-being and the ecosystem health might change in different future
scenarios.

3) Identify interventions for poverty alleviation and sustainable ecosystem
management and explore how they would work under different scenarios and

4) Identify existing initiatives (“seeds”) that could change the course of the scenarios.

During day 1, focus was on disseminating and discussion SPACES preliminary research findings and re-engage with the future scenarios developed in the first workshop in February.

Day 2´s focus was on exploring human well-being and ecosystem health and explore how this might change in different future scenarios. Also to identify and stress-test interventions for poverty alleviation and sustainable ecosystem management and explore how they would work under different scenarios.

On day 3, the collaborating researchers from the SAPECS team (Sothern African Program on Ecosystem Services) led an exercise where participants discussed ideas of an existing project or initiative (“seeds”) that they believed could have a positive impact on the future.

During the workshop, key messages on poverty alleviation and sustainable resource management were collected and will be summarized and delivered at one national and one international policy level workshop organized by SPACES in 2016. The workshop was facilitated by the project partners and applied participatory tools and methods to ensure close interactions among the participants and facilitate sharing of knowledge and experience. Experiential learning was encouraged through group work, presentations, role play and plenary sessions.

Four participatory workshops were held in Mozambique and Kenya (two in each country). Workshop 1 centered around analyzing the current system including the major factors affecting it, the main drivers of future change, and future scenarios. Workshop 2 followed on from workshop 1. Workshop 2 dealt with the future scenarios in more detail, the winners and losers in different scenarios, the basic needs met and unmet under different scenarios, and stress testing different interventions.