Showing posts with label community mapping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label community mapping. Show all posts

Friday, January 06, 2017

Opportunity for PGIS practitioners to map Batak ancestral lands and indigenous peoples’ and community conserved areas and territories (ICCAs) in Northern Palawan, the Philippines

The Coalition against Land Grabbing (CALG) is a national coalition of indigenous peoples and local communities based in the province of Palawan (the Philippines). CALG is looking for young PGIS practitioners to help mapping Batak ancestral lands and ICCAs in northern Palawan. Specifically, they seek support for GPS-based resources inventories, geotagging of relevant locations (hunting grounds, upland farms, ritual sites, etc.).

One  aim of the project is to generate interactive maps that could serve to raise awareness on how the Batak of Palawan manage and perceive their cultural landscape. The interactive display of satellite imagery, enriched with location-based multimedia and other  layers of information, would also provide evidence of on-going threats to forest resources and Batak livelihood and cultural integrity.

Social cartography, emphasizing culturally distinct understanding of landscape, will be overlapped with geo-spatial maps.  The former will include the use of local place names, information on the actual and historical land uses, oral traditions, cosmovisions and testimonies linked to short video-clips syndicated from Google Video or You Tube, photographs (via Panoramio) and text.

CALG envisages that these maps would become the discursive patrimony of the Batak indigenous people and provide them with the necessary legal evidence to apply for Certificates of Ancestral Land Titles (CALTs) and to have their ICCAs included in the ICCA Registry of the United Nations Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC).

The project is on-going and it will end in June 2018.  Assistance for geotagging and mapping is particularly sought during the dry season (between February and May 2017), depending on the availability of PGIS practitioners.  Due to global climate changes, dry season is not necessarily confined to the period mentioned above, but could also extend up to June.

selected candidates will receive free food and lodging during the research, domestic travel costs will be reimbursed and a basic honorarium based on Philippine’s standards will be provided.

During the various stages of project implementation CALG and PGIS practitioners will closely collaborate with the Batak Federation (Bayaan it Batak kat Palawan – BBKP).

Those interested can approach the Coalition against Land Grabbing (CALG) through this email address: calgpalawan@gmail.com

Most recent CALG geotagged reports 







Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Life on the move - Pastoral life and livestock cross-border trade in Northern Uganda through the lens of participatory mapping



Cross-border livestock trade in dryland eastern Africa significantly contributes to the enhancement of food security and generation of wealth. It supports the livelihoods of a wide range of actors including pastoralists, livestock traders and processors.

In this context the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR) with finalcial and technical support provided by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), organised a P3DM workshop to identify key spatial characteristics of the livestock trading routes and marketing practices and bring the different stakeholders (including local authorities) around the same table, share information, discuss challenges and envisage mutually beneficial solutions.

The participatory mapping activity took place in Amudat in August 2016 and focused on the Achorichori Micro-catchment in Karamoja which includes Achorichor, Loroo, Amudat and Moruita Parishes. The area falls within the belt of livestock migratory movement, farmlands, cross-border livestock trade, grazing lands and water points. The mapped area covers approximately 546 sq. km.

The mapping exercise helped identify and locate wet and dry season grazing areas, farmland, forests and patchy pastures. Point items include schools, functional and non-functional boreholes, heath facilities, market places, maize mills, police posts but also churches, shrines and small gardens. Community representatives located on the 3D map all features they consider as important to the ir livelihoods. Their feedback about the mapping process are captured in the film.

Other participating organisations included:

ERMIS Africa, Kenya (P3DM facilitation)
ESIPPS International, Uganda (GIS support)
Vision Care Foundation (VCF), Uganda (community mobilizing)

French version of the film:

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Participatory 3D Modelling in Mapanas, Northern Samar, Philippines



Barangays Barangays Sta. Potenciana and Burgos in Northern Samar, Philippines constructed their Participatory 3D Models (P3DMs) with the help of friends from Citizen Disaster Response Centre (CDRC) Bobon, the Philippine Geographical Society and UNICEF Philippines.

Participatory 3D Modelling in Bobon, Northern Samar, Philippines



Barangays Dancalan, Sta. Clara and Arellano in Northern Samar, Philippines constructed their Participatory 3D Models (P3DMs) with the help of friends from Citizen Disaster Response Centre (CDRC) Bobon, the Philippine Geographical Society and UNICEF Philippines.

Friday, March 04, 2016

IWD2016 - Celebrating women: A champion for the rights of indigenous people

An encounter with an innovative technique known as participatory three-dimensional modelling was to prove a turning point in the life of a young tribeswoman from rural Chad. She now travels the globe to advocate for the rights of her own and other indigenous communities, and to press for their voice to be heard in negotiations about climate change, on which their futures depend.

Growing up as part of the M'bororo people – traditional semi-nomadic and nomadic herders living in Chad and neighbouring countries – nothing could have prepared Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim for the turn her life would take once she was introduced to participatory mapping. At the time, she was a young woman, working to gain recognition of her people's rights, and especially for access to the natural resources that are critical to their livelihoods.

Participatory three-dimensional modelling (P3DM), or participatory mapping, brings together traditional knowledge from local communities about their landscapes and ecosystems with data on physical features, such as land elevation and sea depth. The result is a scaled and geo-referenced three-dimensional (3D) model, which can be a powerful tool for knowledge building and communication, as well as for gaining recognition of local communities' rights to be involved in decision-making that affects their natural resources.

Hindou's introduction to P3DM came through the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee (IPACC), a network of 150 indigenous peoples' organisations in 20 African countries. IPACC had been introduced to participatory mapping by CTA's P3DM expert, Giacomo Rambaldi, and supported in its use as a tool for gathering evidence for indigenous peoples' arguments in national and international negotiations.

A bitter conflict

Encouraged to learn about the practice through a P3DM exercise in Gabon, Hindou spent two weeks living with local pygmies and helping them to build a participatory 3D map of their jungle landscape. The pygmies had lost some of their hunting and fishing rights when a national park was created, and the mapping exercise succeeded in its goal of convincing the government that these indigenous people had a right to be consulted about decisions affecting their homeland.

Hindou was hooked.



"It was a long way away from my own community and very different, but I found the exercise exciting and interesting," said Hindou, who is Director of the Association des Femmes Peules Autochtones du Tchad (AFPAT) and IPACC's Executive Committee representative for the Congo Basin region. "It was the first time I had seen all the intergenerational people mobilised – women, youths, men and elders. I realised that if we did this in my own community, it could help resolve a great many issues."

That chance came in 2012, when, with CTA support, a mapping exercise involving Hindou's own M'bororo people was organised in the southern district of Baïbokoum, the scene of conflicts between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers. Increasing scarcity of natural resources, especially water reserves, was being exacerbated by climate change and population growth, and the bitter contention between the two groups was threatening to spiral out of control.

Hindou was closely involved in the P3DM event, organising the workshop that preceded it, which brought together herders, scientists, UNESCO and World Meteorological Organization representatives as well as government officials for the first time. Once again, participatory mapping proved to be a winning approach. The model-making process enabled all players to have an overview of the contested area, highlighting where the farmers had barred the routes used by herders to take their cattle to water and identifying a range of solutions that would be acceptable to all.

The mapping exercise showed that indigenous peoples could play an effective role in decision-making, from which they had always been excluded in the past. And it gave a new sense of self-confidence to all members of the community, especially women.

"We took the opportunity to increase the capacity of women to express themselves, showing men that the women had a voice and that their opinions were sometimes more valuable than those of men – and the men accepted this," said Hindou. "As a result, women had a greater say in community affairs."



Powerful traditional knowledge

At a personal level, the mapping exercise also proved an eye opener for Hindou herself.

"The impact on me was huge. This was my community, so I knew all the traditional knowledge, but it helped me to understand things that didn't belong to my own generation," she recalls. "It changed my life forever."

Hindou now uses P3DM in all her work, to illustrate the importance of conserving traditional knowledge, how to marry it with scientific knowledge and using both to combat climate change and protect the environment.

Although her roots are still firmly anchored in her community, Hindou has become used to travelling the world to make presentations and put the indigenous people's case to high-ranking officials in climate-change negotiations. For the past 10 years, she has been a regular participant at meetings of the UN Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. She is Co-Chair of the International Indigenous Peoples' Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC), which represents the interests of indigenous peoples throughout the world and presents these at COP negotiations.

"Climate change is a massive problem for indigenous people because we depend on the environment. For any indigenous people, from any corner of the world, livelihoods are linked to natural resources, for our food and medicine, for everything, so if there are floods or droughts the impact is greater for us," she said. "Of course, it is highly unusual for someone of my background to be travelling the world and speaking at conferences and negotiating. But for me, it is important to change the life of my community. I know my people are proud of what I am doing and I can never give up my work. I want to help my community to adapt to climate change, and you cannot talk about climate change without talking about the rights of indigenous people."

Reposted from Spore with permission.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Mapping for Change: Practice, technologies and communication - 10 years have passed - publication still valid and available

This CD “Mapping for Change: Practice, technologies and communication” includes a selection of papers presented at the “Mapping for Change: International Conference of Spatial Information Management and Communication” held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 7th-10th September, 2005 and published in Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) 54 in April 2006. Guest editors of PLA 54 are Giacomo Rambaldi; Jon Corbett; Mike McCall; Rachel Olson; Julius Muchemi; Peter Kwaku Kyem; Daniel Wiener and Robert Chambers.

The CD contains PDF versions of the articles published in PLA 54 translated in the following languages: Arabic, Bangla, Chinese (traditional and simplified), French, Hindi, Persian-Dari, Portuguese, Spanish, Swahili and Tamil as well as the English versions. The CD includes additional resources (mainly in English), including a video of the Conference and key literature on the practice, including UNESCO Conventions on Cultural Mapping.

Available (for free) to residents in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries via CTA Publishing.

Credits for Translations, layout and typesetting 
  • Arabic: Translation by Dr. El-Hussaini Yehia, Center for Development Services, Cairo, with thanks to Ali Mokhtar
  • Bangla: Translation by Enamul Huda and Taifur Rahman, PRA Promoters’ Society, Bangladesh
  • Chinese (Simplified): Translation by Liu Xiaoqian, Yang Fang , Li Fang, Li Xiaoyun, China Agricultural University, Beijing
  • Chinese (Traditional): Translation by Wang Yaohui, National Linkou Senior High School, Linkou Township, Taiwan with special thanks to Hsiao Ya Wen, National Changhua University of Education, Changhua City, Taiwan (Chapters 1 and 2); Lin Mei Jhih, Shengang Junior High School, Shengang Township, Taichung County, Taiwan (Chapter 4); Chuang Yu Chun, National Yangmei Senior High School, Yangmei Township, Taoyuan County, Taiwan (Chapter 7); Shen Tsui Mei, National Linkou Senior High School, Linkou Township, Taipei County, Taiwan (Chapter 9); Jhang Yu Jing, National Sihu Senior High School, Sihu Township, Changhua County, Taiwan (Chapter 12); Lin Wen-Xin, Kaohsiung Municipal Chung-Cheng Industrial Vocational High School, Cianjhen District, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan (Chapter 15)
  • French: Translation by Maryck Nicolas, with thanks to Marie Jaecky of IIED for proofreading
  • Hindi: Translation by Meera Jayaswal, with thanks to Dr. Neela Mukherjee, Director, Development Tracks, Delhi, India, and to Mr.K.K.Singh, Ujjawal Kumar and Sanjay Das for page layout and typesetting
  • Persian-Dari: Translation by Reza Nobacht, with thanks to CENESTA, Tehran for technical support, to Esmaeel Hamidi and Jeyran Farvar for copy editing and proof reading, to Pooya Ghoddousi for coordination and Jeyran Farvar for page layout and typesetting
  • Portuguese: Translation by Francis Sahadeo, with thanks to Ines Fortes for copyediting
  • Spanish: Translation by María Isabel Sanz Bonino, with thanks to Alejandra Larrazábal and Mike McCall for copyediting and Tanya Pascual for proofreading
  • Swahili: Translation by Catherine Wanjiku Gichingi and Margaret Njeri Gichingiri (ERMIS Africa) with thanks to Julius Muchemi, Executive Director and Bancy Wanjiru, Programme Administrator
  • Tamil: Translation by John Devavaram and his team at SPEECH, Madurai, India, including Arunodayam

Saturday, January 03, 2015

PGIS / PPGIS Community Growth updates


The PGIS/PPGIS Community of Practice is present on Dgroups since 2003, on LinkedIn since June 2008 and Facebook since May 2010.

Here are some stats about its growth:

DGroups:
# of members on 31/12/14:       2,643
Growth over the year 2014:         +3%

LinkedIn:
# of members on 31/12/14:      2,364
Growth over the year 2014:         +6%

Facebook:
# of Likes on 31/12/14:             1,428
Growth over the year 2014:        +14%

Twitter:
# of followers on 31/12/14:          611
Growth over the year 2014:        +10%

A new PGIS twitter account has been creates to report on PGIS activities run by CTA. You are welcome to follow it as well.

Be reminded that on Dgroups there are four PGIS/PPGIS communities. One for a global audience in English, and language-defined French, Spanish and Portuguese chapters. The above image shows the geographic distribution on members on the global (English) list.

Monday, September 08, 2014

Participatory 3D mapping for DRR in Jelapan, Sindumartani, Sleman, Indonesia



As the most active volcano in Indonesia, Merapi Volcano has been threatened the life of people surrounding its slope either by primary hazard in form of pyroclastic flow and secondary hazard in form of debris flow. Therefore, disaster risk reduction (DRR) effort become an important thing to be done in the area. Integrating different stakeholders is one of the most pressing contemporary needs for enhancing disaster risk reduction. The participation of such a large range of actors in DRR allows for the integration of local and scientific knowledge as well as top-down and bottom-up actions.
Methods that used for this research is participatory three dimensional mapping (P3DM). P3DM provided a tool of dialogue between local people, scientists and local government. All stakeholders were able to contribute their knowledge on the same tool. P3DM is credible to both locals, who build the map and plot most of the information and to scientists and government representatives who can easily overlap their own data and plans. In the process, NGO/academic partners served as facilitators and moderators. Such a dialogue resulted in concerted actions including both bottom-up and top-down measures to enhance disaster risk reduction.

Results showed that from the three dimensional (3D) map, participants which consist of local community and representative of local government, could identify all aspects which needed to enhance disaster risk reduction in the study area. Those aspects are affected area, distribution of vulnerable group which consist of children, old people, people with disability, and pregnant woman, also meeting point for each neighborhood system and evacuation route which can be used to evacuate when the pyroclastic and debris flow from Merapi volcano reach the area. Those aspects were displayed in the 3D maps using clear symbol and legend which are depicted in push-pins (points), yarns (lines), and paint (polygons).

Read full paper: on ScienceDirect

Thursday, July 10, 2014

She becomes more beautiful: Capturing the essence of Tobago Island for a better tomorrow



The Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI), the University of the West Indies (UWI), the Tobago House of Assembly, Division of Agriculture, Marine Affairs, Marketing and the Environment (DAME) and the Partners with Melanesians (PwM) facilitated the building of a Participatory 3D Model (P3DM) of Tobago Island from 28th September to 12th October 2012.

The model was used as a tool to incorporate and recognize local and traditional knowledge and values into decision making about climate change adaptation.

A training of trainers in facilitating participatory approaches, with participants drawn from the Caribbean Region, was executed concurrently with the building of the P3D model of Tobago. Participants in the Training of Trainers used participatory video to evaluate the effectiveness of the use of P3DM.

The project was funded by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and the United Nations Development Programme and the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (UNDP GEF SGP).

Friday, May 23, 2014

PGIS Tutorials by SEI, York, UK



These online video guides and slides provide practical information and examples on designing, planning, undertaking and then analysing community maps using GIS techniques. The video guides describe in detail the steps needed to prepare for community consultations using maps, examples of collection methods and then detailed information on how convert participatory maps into digital spatial databases. Finally there are example slide resources on how you can use community mapping and PGIS to improve environmental decision making outcomes.

Thursday, May 08, 2014

A Guide to using Community Mapping and Participatory-GIS recently released

This guide, developed by John Forrester and Steve Cinderby from the University of York, UK, provides practical guidance aimed at lay users, community groups and students on whether community mapping and participatory geographic information systems are appropriate methods for the development issue you are investigating. The guide then talks you through the practical steps of designing, running and assessing community information collected using maps. The options, benefits and skills needed for of further analysis of the maps using PGIS are also discussed. Finally, alternative methods that could also be useful for community groups are also considered with links to other information sources.

The Guide to using Community Mapping and Participatory-GIS has been prepared as part of the Managing Borderlands project and funded by the Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme of the Economic & Social and Natural Environment Research Councils

Monday, February 24, 2014

Community Mapping: Finding Stories and Solutions in the Places We Live




Everywhere we go, we find challenges: waste management, poverty, health issues, corruption, drug abuse, fights. The list goes on.

But these challenges are also opportunities for us to act and bring change. In a democracy, we cannot depend on the government to solve all of our problems.

In community mapping, we venture out to different communities to discover what challenges, document their stories using digital media and photography, and explore ways to find solutions.

From July 1-11, 2013, BCMD piloted a community mapping project in Thimphu. 25 youth participated in the mapping of 5 communities: Changzamtog, Hong Kong Market, Changjiji, Motithang, and Changidaphu.

Source: YouTube

Friday, August 30, 2013

At global land rights conference, combining participatory mapping tools with traditional knowledge emerges as powerful weapon to fight massive land grabs

SAMOSIR, NORTH SUMATRA (30 August 2013) - With governments, loggers, miners and palm oil producers poaching their lands with impunity, indigenous leaders from 17 countries gathered on a remote island in Sumatra this week to launch a global fight for their rights that will take advantage of powerful participatory mapping tools combined with indigenous knowledge to mark traditional boundaries.

“It’s amazing to see indigenous groups from all over the world coming here armed with hundreds of detailed maps they have created with things like handheld GPS devices and Internet mapping apps,” said Vicky Tauli-Corpuz, head of the Philippines-based Tebtebba, one of the co-organizers of the Global Conference on Community Participatory Mapping on Indigenous Peoples’ Territories, which took place on the edge of the largest volcanic lake in the world. “It’s a new and vivid way to illustrate how they and their ancestors have inhabited and worked these lands for thousands of years and have every right to assert their ownership.”

Indigenous groups from countries including Malaysia, Nepal, Panama, Mexico and Brazil, explained how they have adopted affordable, high-tech mapping technology to retrace the history of their land ownership and catalog their natural resources. Their hope is that detailed maps can help them fight the destruction of vast tracks of forests, peatlands and waterways—brazen incursions by government and industry that not only deprive indigenous peoples of their lands but also greatly accelerate the global loss of biodiversity and accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

For example, participants at the conference believe maps of this sort could help bolster the fight in Indonesia to stop the steady loss of traditional lands to palm oil production, logging and other industrial needs. Participants issued a declaration calling on the government of Indonesia to pass legislation, currently under consideration by the nation’s Parliament, which would provide new protections for the country’s 50 million indigenous peoples.

“We need to take advantage of new mapping tools to accelerate the process of mapping the more than 30 million hectares we have left to document—before they are swallowed up by plantations,” said Abdon Nababan, secretary general of Indonesia’s Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), which has helped communities across the country to map their customary forests as part of their efforts to defend their lands against development by palm oil and other industrial plantations and mining.

A recent report stated that the Indonesian government’s continued practice of granting national and international companies permission to convert millions of hectares of forests to palm oil and other plantations on lands that overlap with or abut indigenous territories often leads to the displacement of indigenous peoples—and a rash of sometimes-violent land disputes. The report on the state of large-scale agribusiness expansion in Southeast Asia by the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), also noted that the country faced more than 280 land conflicts across the country in 2012.

“Lines on a map have always been a source of conflict, but they are becoming more and more contentious around the world today,” said Tauli-Corpuz. “In many cases, government and military maps don’t acknowledge the presence of indigenous territories, leaving these communities vulnerable to land rights violations and conflicts, as well as the loss of their sustainable livelihoods, the onset of poverty, environmental degradation, and the loss of cultural heritage. Indigenous peoples are creating maps to protect their customary lands.”

Sleek computer-generated Indonesian maps presented at the conference documented cases in which the government had handed over indigenous territories to developers. In the case of the Lusan community in Borneo, three different government agencies had handed a community’s land over to three different companies—a logging group, a mining operation and a palm oil plantation.

“Without maps, it is difficult for indigenous peoples to prove that they have occupied their ancestral lands for centuries,” said Giacomo Rambaldi, a senior program coordinator at the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), who has helped indigenous peoples to develop maps for more than 15 years. “If you are able to document and map your use of the resources since time immemorial, you have a chance of asserting your rights over land and water.”

It Takes a Village

Unlike satellite images or traditional political maps, the maps presented at the conference document key cultural and social sites, such as burial grounds, caches of medicinal plants, hunting trails or groves of specific species of trees. Based on pre-existing maps, satellite images or coordinates generated by hand-held GPS devices, these computer-generated documents or models record knowledge passed down through generations and integrate input from the entire community—including women and youth.

Conference participants heard that indigenous communities have successfully used these maps to protect their lands from land grabs and to monitor the impact of external forces on their lands.

In Brazil, South America’s largest democracy, an Afro-Brazilian community used a map to stop Cyclone-4, a space company jointly owned by Brazil and Ukraine, from expanding into their lands to build rocket launchers. These maps refuted claims by the company that only 10 communities would be impacted by the development by showing that more than 100 communities would be displaced. Cyclone-4’s expansion was blocked—though the government continues its efforts to build the rocket launchers on indigenous territories.

In Panama, which loses one percent of its tropical forests each year, members of the Guna community created a map—in the Guna language—to determine if the expansion of croplands had damaged sacred sites located in the rainforest surrounding their community. The map also served to show younger generations where these sites are located.

In Indonesia, the village of Pandumaan produced hand-drawn maps to scale, based on GPS data, to show that a pulp and paper company encroaching on their lands had razed the forests they rely on for myrrh—a fragrant resin that they sell for a living and use in spiritual rituals.

In Malaysia, which, along with Indonesia, is a leader in palm oil production, communities have used maps to win 25 of the 250 land disputes brought in front of the courts since 2001. The government continues to appeal the 25 cases that it lost in an attempt to regain the lands from indigenous peoples.

40 Million Hectares by 2020

Indonesia’s 2,200 indigenous communities, spread out across the country’s 18,307 islands, are the most prolific indigenous map-makers, the conference revealed. These mapping efforts have added urgency, since the country’s Constitutional Court decided in May that a line in the country’s 1999 Forestry Law, which states that customary forests are state forests, is not constitutional. To take advantage of this decision, which would first have to be implemented in national and local law, experts from the conference said it’s crucial for indigenous peoples to put these forests on paper.

AMAN’s Abdon Nababan said that he hopes to help map all 40 million hectares of land by 2020, and he called on the national Parliament to speed up the adoption of the Law on the Recognition and Protection of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The body is currently reviewing a draft of the law.

“Without Indigenous Peoples, There Would Be No Forests”

“Mapping not only empowers indigenous communities with evidence that they can use to assert their land rights, it also provides communities with the ability to catalog the natural resources sheltered in their territories,” said Tauli-Corpuz, the head of Tebtebba. “These maps successfully demonstrate what we already know: that indigenous peoples are the best custodians of their forests and lands.”

A study by The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) finds that biodiversity thrives in indigenous territories where communities are free to engage in hunting and other sustainable uses of natural resources—as opposed to state-held protected areas that ban such activities.

The National Coalition of Indigenous Peoples (KASAPI) in the Philippines arrived at the same conclusion. The project, which inventoried the resources in indigenous communities across the country, concluded from evidence gathered on the ground and from village elders—who recalled which species of plants have disappeared since their youth—that forests and lands owned and managed by indigenous peoples have stronger biodiversity than those that are under government control.

According to conference participants, maps that document a territory’s biodiversity provide indigenous communities and national governments alike with “baseline” knowledge about the health of their natural resources, enabling them to monitor changes to natural resources, such as the restoration—or degradation—of forests over time. Participants added that maps like these can show the impacts of climate change—and aid in the tracking of global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Vu Thi Hien of the Centre of Research and Development in Upland Areas (CERDA), taught members of the Thai Nguyen community in Vietnam how to map in order to support an international climate change effort to reduce climate change through the protection and preservation of forests, known as REDD+. She said that local authorities were so impressed with the professionalism and accuracy of the maps that they adopted the maps for their own use.

“If the community is not empowered to assert their rights, they can only go so far, even with strong laws supporting land rights,” Tauli-Corpuz said.

###

About Tebtebba
Tebtebba (Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education) is an indigenous peoples’ organization born out of the need for heightened advocacy to have the rights of indigenous peoples respected, protected and fulfilled worldwide. It also advocates and works on the elaboration and operationalization of indigenous peoples’ sustainable, self-determined development. www.tebtebba.org.

About AMAN
AMAN’s mission is to pursue sovereignty, prosperity and dignity of indigenous peoples.  Established on 17 March 1999, its members consist of 2,240 indigenous communities in Indonesia. www.aman.or.id.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Community mapping video documentary




This video documents community mapping activities in Myanmar, Nepal and Thailand.

In memory of Perween Rahman (1957-13 March 2013), a Pakistani social activist, director of the Orangi Pilot Project Research and Training Institute. She was murdered on 13 March 2013.

Read more
Pakistan mourns murdered aid worker Perween Rahman (BBC)

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Who Counts? The Power of Participatory Statistics

Local people can generate their own numbers – and the statistics that result are powerful for themselves and can influence policy. Since the early 1990s there has been a quiet tide of innovation in generating statistics using participatory methods. Development practitioners are supporting and facilitating participatory statistics from community-level planning right up to sector and national-level policy processes. Statistics are being generated in the design, monitoring and evaluation, and impact assessment of development interventions. Through chapters describing policy, programme and project research, Who Counts? provides impetus for a step change in the adoption and main-streaming of participatory statistics within international development practice.

The challenge laid down is to foster institutional change on the back of the methodological breakthroughs and philosophical commitment described in this book. The prize is a win–win outcome in which statistics are a part of an empowering process for local people and part of a real-time information flow for those aid agencies and government departments willing to generate statistics in new ways. Essential reading for researchers and students of international development as well as policy-makers, managers and practitioners in development agencies.

'This is a timely compilation of ground-breaking work which adds up to a powerful agenda for transformation. This book shows how we can quantify the qualitative, build the active agency of excluded groups and generate participatory statistics that have greater rigour and legitimacy than most conventional statistics.’ David Archer, Head of Programmes, ActionAid


Who Counts?
Edited by Jeremy Holland with an Afterword by Robert Chambers
Practical Action Publishing

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Risks of Mapping Indigenous Lands, Ep 2 - Giacomo Rambaldi, CTA




Giacomo Rambaldi from CTA discusses participatory mapping including the benefits and risks during the "Participatory Mapping and Community Empowerment for Climate Change Adaptation, Planning and Advocacy workshop" held in Solomon Islands on 21-26 May 2012.

Video by TNC, Kat Gawlik

Friday, March 16, 2012

Participatory 3D Modelling of Manus Island, PNG



Participatory 3D modelling (P3DM) activity supported by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and partners in 2011 in PNG to help residents of Manus Island map out the terrestrial, coastal and marine resources and to  plan for adapting to potential impacts due to climate change.

Source: TNC

Sunday, March 04, 2012

Feedback from a Participatory 3D Modelling exercise representing the Abongo-Mitsogho cultural landscape of the Ikobey Commune and Waka National Park

As part of a region-wide effort aimed at involving local communities in the sustainable management of natural resources in the Congo Basin and at adding value and authority to local and indigenous knowledge and values and at ensuring equitable benefit sharing resulting from co-managed protected areas, the Agence Nationale des Parcs Nationaux (ANPN), Brainforest, CTA, IPACC, MINAPYGA, Rainforest Foundation UK, and the Wildlife Conservation Society-Gabon (WCS) supported a series of initiatives in the area including the participatory 3D modelling exercise described in this report.


While responding to needs expressed by local communities and by the park administration, the exercise offered the opportunity for training delegates from national and regional organisations based in Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Download the full report of the activity: English | Français

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Participatory mapping at CTA

Anne Legrosollard from Spore magazine interviews Giacomo Rambaldi, Sr. Programme Coordinator at CTA.

What is Participatory mapping?
What we support and promote at CTA goes beyond “making maps at community level”. We look at a practice dealing with generating, managing, analysing and communicating spatial information in a bottom-up mode. Mapmaking is considered as a step in a broader process leading to community empowerment by adding value and authority to local spatial knowledge.

How far can participatory mapping support decision-making ?
When it comes to accessing, using and / or managing natural resources, spatial dimensions always influence decision-making. Maps drawn in the sand on paper or on a computer screen are an accepted support to analysing spatially defined issues and getting the broader view which is essential in the process of making decisions. In addition maps are based on a visual language made of colours and symbols, thus are understandable also by illiterate people or less educated people.

What benefits can rural communities derive from the practice ?
The process leading to the production of maps is more important than the outputs themselves, as knowledge holders learn by doing. The process is quite motivating and often leads to stronger identity and cohesion among community members. On the top of that maps are powerful (and quite convincing) media which can be used to convey local concerns and aspirations to decision- and policy makers.

How do you ensure sustainability of the outcome of participatory mapping initiatives ?
Good practice recommends to perform participatory mapping activities only within the context of a long-lasting initiative having resources to continue beyond map-making. The map-making process raises the level of awareness among knowledge holders and with it their expectations and aspirations. It is a moral obligation of those accompanying the process to secure resources ensuring the continuation of the initiative to address new realities (positive and may be negative) which may emerge.

What should be done to prevent outsiders from appropriating themselves of the data generated during a participatory mapping exercise and to derive exclusive benefit from these ?
Good practice recommends that those assisting knowledge holders in the process are trusted intermediaries and that prior informed consent is obtained. Map making is a political process which can have positive or negative impacts. Drawing a line on a map may ignite conflict. How many wars have been fought over a line? Intermediaries facilitating map-making processes should be aware of these implication and operate at the highest ethical standards.  Being or not-being on a map is a trade-off. Nowadays if you are not on a map, you do not exist.

More information on what CTA does in the context of PGIS practice is found here: http://pgis.cta.int

Monday, September 19, 2011

Amazon Mapping



The New Social Cartography Project of the Amazon collaborates with indigenous and other communities in Brazil to map their territories, combining traditional knowledge with scientific, legal and policy expertise. More than 100 communities have taken part so far—mapping more than a million hectares, or 2.5 million acres. This video is an example of how one map was made. Learn more by visiting the www.fordfoundation.org/about-us/2010-annual-report.

Source: Amazon Mapping from Ford Foundation