The video call connects to a small office in Zambia's Southern Province, where Blessings Katongo sits in front of a wall calendar marked with village names and workshop dates. It's late afternoon, and they've just finished a three-day community adaptation planning session. Their voice carries the particular exhaustion of someone who's spent seventy-two hours helping a hundred people make impossible decisions together.
Blessings, 27, is part of the first generation of professional climate adaptation facilitators. A job that didn't exist when they started university. They grew up in rural Zambia, studied environmental policy in Cape Town, and returned in 2031 to work with the Community-Based Adaptation Scale Southern Africa+ Project1, which operates across Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. Their work involves running workshops where communities collectively decide how to adapt to climate changes that have already made traditional farming calendars obsolete.
They're speaking from a district office that loses power for six hours most days, which is why we're talking now, while the generator runs.
So you just finished a workshop. How did it go?
Blessings: We got a plan. Whether it's the right plan, or whether it'll actually happen... laughs those are different questions.
This was a community of about eight hundred people. Three villages that share a watershed. They came together because the rains have shifted so much that nobody's individual farming strategy works anymore. The old calendar said plant maize in November. But November rains haven't come reliably since 2029. Some years they come in October, some years not until January. You can't gamble your family's food security on that kind of variance.
So over three days, we worked through what they know—which is a lot, generations of knowledge about this land—and what the climate projections say, which is basically "it's going to get worse and more unpredictable." Then we tried to figure out what they can do collectively that they can't do alone.
They decided to pool resources for a small irrigation system fed by the river, and to experiment with drought-resistant crop varieties as a community rather than having each family risk their whole plot. Smart plan. Very practical.
But here's what I'm sitting with: the irrigation system will cost about $40,000 USD. The workshop materials I brought? Those cost $3,000. The funding for actual implementation? We've submitted seventeen proposals in the last two years. Three got funded.
This'll be proposal eighteen.
That's a brutal ratio. How do you walk communities through that reality?
Blessings: Honestly? I'm not sure I do it well.
There's this principle in the work we do. Locally led adaptation, they call it2. The idea is that communities know what they need, and our job is to help them articulate it and connect them to resources. Very empowering language. Very... I don't know, hopeful?
But in practice, I show up with a laptop full of climate data and a budget for workshop supplies, and I help people spend three days making decisions that might never happen because the money isn't there.
They pause, looking at something off-screen
Sometimes I feel like a grief counselor disguised as a development worker. We're facilitating acceptance more than adaptation.
Sorry, that's too cynical. Some things do get funded. And even when they don't, the process of deciding together changes something. People stop feeling isolated in their losses. That matters.
Walk me through what actually happens in these workshops.
Blessings: Day one is usually chaos.
You've got a hundred people in a room—or under a tree, depending on the venue—and everyone has different ideas about what the problem is. The maize farmers say we need better seeds. The women who grow vegetables say we need water access. The young men say we need jobs so we can stop depending on farming altogether. The elders say we need to pray more effectively.
My job is to create a structure where all of that gets heard without anyone walking out.
We use this methodology. Lots of small group discussions, visual tools for people who don't read, translation into local languages because my Tonga is functional but not great. We map the watershed together. We create seasonal calendars showing how the rains have shifted. We do this exercise where people mark on a timeline when their grandparents farmed versus their parents versus now.
That timeline exercise always gets emotional. You watch people realize in real-time that the knowledge they inherited doesn't work anymore. That their grandparents weren't wrong, the world just changed.
Day two is where it gets interesting. That's when we start talking about options. I bring data: crop varieties that tolerate heat stress, water harvesting techniques, weather forecasting tools. But I'm also supposed to draw out local knowledge. Traditional practices that might work in new conditions.
Here's what nobody tells you about "integrating traditional knowledge with scientific data." Sometimes they conflict. Sometimes the traditional practice is genuinely maladaptive now. And sometimes the scientific recommendation sounds insane to people whose survival has depended on doing things a certain way for generations.
Like, I had one community where the climate data clearly showed they needed to shift away from maize to sorghum and millet. More drought-tolerant, more nutritious, better suited to the new rainfall patterns.
But maize is identity. It's culture. It's what you eat at every meal.
Asking people to grow less maize isn't just agricultural advice. It's asking them to change who they are.
They didn't want to hear it. And honestly? I don't blame them.
So what happened?
Blessings: They compromised. Decided to keep some maize for home consumption and diversify the rest of their plots. It's not optimal from a climate resilience standpoint, but it's what they could live with.
This is the part that keeps me up at night: Is that collective decision-making, or is it collective denial? Did I facilitate empowerment or did I just help them feel better about a choice that won't work?
I don't know. I really don't.
You mentioned the elders wanting to pray more effectively. How do you navigate the spiritual dimension?
Blessings: laughs Carefully. Very carefully.
Look, I grew up here. I understand that when the rains fail, it's not just a meteorological event. It's a relationship breakdown. With the land, with the ancestors, with the spiritual forces that govern fertility and water. You can't just show up with a PowerPoint about millimeters of rainfall and expect that to be sufficient.
Some of my colleagues—especially the ones trained in Europe or North America—they struggle with this. They want clean separation: science over here, belief over there. But that's not how people live. That's not how decisions get made.
So we make space for it. We start workshops with prayers or libations, depending on the community. We acknowledge that climate change is also a spiritual crisis. A severing of the relationship between people and place. And then we try to work within that framework.
Sometimes it leads to beautiful solutions. I've seen communities decide to restore sacred groves because protecting those forests also protects their watershed. The spiritual and the practical align.
Other times... other times you watch people decide that what they really need is a rain ceremony, and you know that's not going to work, but you can't say that because you're supposed to be facilitating their priorities, not imposing yours.
How do you handle power dynamics within the community? Not everyone's voice carries the same weight.
Blessings: This is the part that haunts me.
We have all these techniques for inclusive participation. Small group discussions so women can speak without men dominating. Youth consultations. Separate sessions for marginalized groups. We try really hard to make sure the final plan reflects everyone's needs, not just the loudest voices.
But here's what I've learned: facilitation is power.
The questions I ask, the options I present, the way I frame problems. All of that shapes outcomes. I can make a community feel like they're making their own choices while subtly steering them toward the solutions my NGO wants to see.
And sometimes I do that. Sometimes I know what needs to happen—like the maize-to-sorghum shift—and I structure the conversation to make that option more appealing. I'll emphasize the risks of maize more than the cultural loss of switching crops. I'll bring in a farmer from another district who successfully transitioned, so people can see it's possible.
Is that facilitation or manipulation? The line gets blurry.
There was this workshop last year where a community decided they wanted to invest in a diesel-powered irrigation pump. From a pure adaptation standpoint, it made sense. Reliable water access, increased yields, food security. But diesel? In 2034? When we're supposed to be promoting renewable energy?
I steered them away from it. Talked about solar pumps, about long-term fuel costs, about the funding priorities of donor agencies. They eventually agreed to solar.
But I think about that sometimes. They wanted diesel. It was their choice. And I changed it because I thought I knew better. Because my NGO's climate mitigation commitments mattered more than their autonomy.
What do you wish you'd known when you started this work?
Blessings: That the workshop is the easy part.
I came into this thinking the challenge was getting communities to make good decisions together. And that is hard, don't get me wrong. But the real challenge is what happens after.
Because we finish the workshop, everyone's excited, the plan is beautiful, and then... nothing happens. Or nothing happens for two years while the funding proposal circulates. Or partial funding comes through and you can build half an irrigation system, which is basically useless.
Or—and this is worse—the funding comes through but it's tied to conditions the community didn't agree to. Like, you wanted a solar pump, but the donor will only fund solar pumps if you also attend financial literacy training and form a water management committee with gender parity and submit quarterly reports in English.
All of which might be good ideas! But they weren't part of the community's plan. They're conditions imposed after the fact. And suddenly this locally-led adaptation process is looking pretty externally-driven.
I wish someone had told me that my job isn't really about helping communities adapt. It's about translating community needs into donor language, and then translating donor requirements back into something communities can live with.
I'm not a facilitator. I'm a translator working between two parties who don't speak the same language and don't actually trust each other.
That sounds exhausting. Why do you keep doing it?
Blessings: long pause
Because sometimes it works. Not often enough, but sometimes.
There's a community I worked with in 2032. My second workshop ever. They decided to experiment with agroforestry, integrating trees into their farming systems for shade, soil health, and diversified income. It was a ten-year plan, which seemed insane at the time. Who plans ten years out when the rains might not come next month?
But they got funding. They planted the trees. And last month I went back to visit, and the trees are growing. The soil is better. The microclimates under the canopy are cooler. Families are harvesting fruit and selling timber.
And here's the thing: they're teaching other communities now. They've become the example I bring to workshops when people say "this will never work."
That community didn't just adapt. They created a future that's different from the past but still theirs. That's what I'm here for. Those rare moments when collective decision-making actually produces collective transformation.
They look directly at the camera
Also, honestly? I don't know what else I'd do. This is the world we have. Someone has to help communities navigate it. Might as well be someone who actually knows what it's like to watch your home's climate change in real-time.
My mother still plants maize in November because that's when you plant maize. Every year the rains come later. Every year she's disappointed. She knows the climate has changed. She just can't bring herself to change with it.
That's what I'm trying to prevent. That paralysis between knowledge and action. If I can help a hundred people make one decision together that gives them a slightly better chance of thriving instead of just surviving? That's worth the funding proposals and the power dynamics and the uncertainty about whether I'm helping or just making people feel better while things get worse.
Last question. What do you think people outside Zambia, outside Africa, don't understand about adaptation?
Blessings: That you can't adapt until you've grieved what you're losing.
Everyone wants to talk about technologies and policies and funding mechanisms. And sure, those matter. But what I see in these workshops is people mourning. Mourning the climate their grandparents knew. Mourning the farming practices that defined their identity. Mourning the future they thought their children would have.
You can't grieve alone. Not effectively. That's why the collective process matters, even when the funding doesn't come through. People need to sit together and acknowledge that the world has changed, and it's not their fault, and they're going to figure out how to live in it anyway.
The rest of the world is going to have to learn this. Not just rural Zambia. Everyone. You can't engineer your way out of loss. You have to feel it first. Then you can decide what comes next.
The lights flicker—the generator is running low
I should go. But yeah. That's the work. Helping people grieve together so they can decide together. It's messier than the project reports suggest.
This interview is a speculative exploration of climate adaptation facilitation in 2035, based on current trends in community-based adaptation approaches. Blessings Katongo is a fictional character created to illuminate the complexities of collective climate decision-making in vulnerable communities.