Conservation Story Blong Chivoko" was made by the men and women of the remote coastal village of Chivoko, accessible only by sea on the north-west tip of Choiseul Island, one of the Solomon Islands. Chivoko's tribal land is one of the last remaining intact and unlogged forests in the Solomon islands. Their reefs are important spawning sites for the grouper fish which come to lay their eggs every year for 2 months around May. Their story is an insight into the problems they are facing with increased pressure from logging companies, increasing population, declining forest and marine resources, and ensuing climate change. They provide solutions which may help other Solomon Island and other communities around the world, to also safeguard the abundance of resources for future generations to come ...
More information on a Participatory 3D Model done in Chivoko village in 2009 is available here.
At the Manus Province Climate Change Seminar ‘Manus Way Forward’, October 2010, over 70 participants presented and shared experiences, expertise and ideas on how to adapt to climate change impacts. As part of the recommendations, representatives from the Provincial Government suggested using Participatory 3D modeling (P3DM) as a tool to help convene stakeholders and discuss province-wide responses to climate change impacts that would support and build on local efforts and scale-up impacts and opportunities.
In particular, the tool was proposed as a way to initiate discussion on a protected area network for Manus, the Manus ‘MOSAIC’. The exercise would be an initial step in outlining the spatial coverage of key ecosystem services, such as watersheds, reefs and mangroves, and representing and discussing opportunities for strengthened management of these areas under a future of climate change, and in the context of social and economic development for the province. The opportunity to involve local stakeholders from all LLG jurisdictions in this process will help develop a roadmap for the development of a Manus ‘MOSAIC’ protected area network.
Participatory 3D modelling
Participatory 3D modelling (P3DM) is a fully collaborative exercise that combines community mapping with open discussions on land-use and land-use planning scenarios. It combines geographic precision with local, individual spatial knowledge and ‘mind-maps’ of locality and familiar settings. During a P3DM exercise, all participants contribute to make a physical, hands-on wood-and paper model, to scale, of their community, island or area. This is typically made on a large table in the centre of a meeting hall, school or other public place. Once the model is made, then people become ‘resource persons’ and informants, and everyone will contribute to placing features and places onto the model. Key informants, such as elders and experienced fishermen or foresters, will offer their view of past events, of boundaries, of key localities and times for certain activities, and these can be discussed, and learned, by all participants.
Below is the video produced during the Solomon Islands event in February 2011.
In this way, the model is more than just a map, it is a representation of spatial knowledge of the participants, and a source of discussion and interpretation around key issues.
Proposed area of Manus to be represented by the P3DM exercise (Map by Nate Peterson, TNC)
Although one key objective of this exercise is to plan for protection and restoration of key natural features, and to plan for possible climatic changes, other issues that are important to the province and the participating communities can be discussed in the same context. Furthermore, the model and the information can be used again, and again, for collaborative discussions and planning on key development issues. Digital GIS can be extracted from the model, and vice-versa, to aid and inform future discussions. In this way, scientific information can be easily communicated and integrated with local knowledge and understanding.
Activity overview
The P3DM exercise will take place over a two-week period, from Monday 29th August to Friday 9th September. The first week will be dedicated to constructing the blank relief model, working closely with the local high-schools schools in Lorengau to allow students the opportunity to have a hands-on lesson in geography. It will also allow those participants interested in training / learning how to carry out a P3DM the opportunity to get involved.
The second week will concentrate on making the blank model come alive. Participants from all areas of Manus, and with all technical and local backgrounds, will discuss and add information to the model, including point data (features such as houses, schools, waterfalls, caves etc), line data (roads, streams, rivers, tracks, paths, boundaries, fences, cables, runways etc) and area data (polygons, such as mangroves, forest concession areas, reef flats, beaches, airports etc). Local knowledge on boundaries and features from participants from each part of Manus will contribute to an overall local picture of the province. Official and technical data can also be cross-referenced with local understanding, and represented on the model.
Towards the end of the second week, a facilitated discussion will focus on key issues, including ecosystem services and existing and proposed protected areas; current and proposed development activities (mining, forest concessions, urban and commercial expansion); and information related to predicted climate change impacts.
Future discussions on the proposed Manus MOSAIC protected area network can build on this initial analysis and use the 3D model for further participatory mapping.
General objectives of the Manus MOSAIC P3DM:
The P3DM exercise will enable all participants:
To learn and understand Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in an open, hands-on and accessible way
To participate in spatial planning for their own area as well as for the whole province
To identify planned developments and trends in land-use change, and assessing the impacts of these changes on key ecosystem services
To open a discussion on climate change impacts and how to integrate adaptation into spatial planning at local and provincial scales
To discuss management and protection measures for key ecosystem services in the context of scaling-up beyond local efforts to ensure the best network of connectivity in conservation and adaptation efforts for the whole province
I’d like to thank all the team who made the ten-day ‘Participatory 3D modelling (P3DM) for climate change’ engagement with Boe Boe community, Solomon Islands, such a successful event.
It is the first time that such innovative, yet simple, mapping and communication tools have been used in the context of climate change adaptation.
The team, led by Kenn Mondiai of Partners With Melanesians, and the Solomon Islands’ TNC staff and local partners, were able to hand over a vibrant, illustrated, ‘living’ and accurately-scaled model of the community customary lands and waters, at a ceremony involving Boe Boe village and neighboring communities.
The model took teams of students and volunteers 3 days to build, and then community members added the detail – from their own houses, their gardens, their route through the mangroves, forest paths, conservation areas, and anything else they reckoned important to note.
At the same time, climate vulnerability and adaptive capacity surveys with households, led by Esther Ririmae and Gideon Solo, and follow-up work by the team with community members on a range of key issues, allowed the modeling exercise to focus on community perspectives of climate change impacts, and the villagers’ collective ability to respond to these and other development pressures.
Of real interest, digital and ‘scientific’ modeling provided by TNC GIS folks (Nate Peterson, Seno Mauli) and Javier Leon of University of Wollongong, was seamlessly integrated into the mapping exercise and gave the community additional perspectives on their local knowledge, to aid decision-making.
The exercise has given all those involved, and all the partners in the Australian Government / AusAID supported project ‘Building the Resilience of Communities and their Ecosystems to the Impacts of Climate Change’, a chance to explore how local communities can assess potential climate impacts, be aware of their own capacities and vulnerabilities, and make decisions going forward.
Please find the attached initial write-up of the activity in the 'files' section at this link http://community.eld... , along with some resources on conducting P3DM. More detailed reports will follow from Partners With Melanesians and other papers on the lessons learned from the exercise.
The guru of P3DM, Giacomo Rambaldi, based at the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation (CTA) in the Netherlands, has worked with both Kenn and myself before on the tool, and has an online resource kit available at http://pgis-tk-en.cta.int
Next up is 3D modeling at the provincial scale in Manus!
The initiative has been implemented in the framework of the Australian Government / AusAID-funded project ‘Building the Resilience of Communities and their Ecosystems to the Impacts of Climate Change in the Pacific”.
This 16 min film documents a participatory mapping experience of Ethiopian farmers in the Oromiya Region. Over a period of 12 days close to 140 people contributed to the construction of a 3-dimensional map covering – at a 1:10,000-scale - a total area of 672 sq km.
In a relatively degraded environment where soil fertility plummeted after the clearance of the natural forest and food security is at stake, residents of four woredas (Welmera, Ejere, Adea berga and Mulo) convene in the village of Telecho to map their own land.
Challenged by an unchartered process they successfully complete it, and while populating the map, they compare their past and present ecosystems and identify the root causes of their problems. They finally propose with their own solutions.
The experience marked their life …
Read more about this participatory 3D modelling (P3DM) experience in Ethiopia.
