Dialogues took place between community leaders, key government offices including Culture and Tourism, Land administration and Environmental Protection and administration and MELCA-Ethiopia. These dialogues have been used to surface tensions and conflicts between contesting interests. Some of these contested interests were between: expansion of agriculture and protection of SNS; traditional belief systems and Islam and Christianity; conservation of biodiversity and use of natural resources for livelihoods. As reported above, the dialogues resulted in mutual understanding of these contested realities and reaching at a mutually accepted solution.

In addition, the participatory mapping methodology has provided a crucial representational mode for communicating and generating local knowledge of landscapes.