Participatory GIS for Effective Land Management under Transitional Conditions

Two week PGIS course in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

Rural and regional socio-economic spaces and their land resources are increasingly dynamic due to changes in space-economies under conditions of changing land and resource tenure. Sound sustainable land resource management is essential during the transition phases of common property under customary regimes, to cooperative property tenure and various mixes of privatised and state property regimes. These different regimes do and will co-exist and there is movement between them, so there needs to be effective methods for good land management and planning.

In addition the rural areas in Southern Africa are developing in a context of globalisation, political transformation, resource pressures, and growing concerns over environmental degradation and natural and man-induced disasters.
There are conflicts between local and regional actors, in civil society, government and commercial sectors that affect planning and management for sustainable land and resource development. This requires skills in facilitating participation and communication of information, which come together in participatory spatial planning and management (PSP).
Where issues involve spatial management, especially of communal space under transitional tenure regimes, the participatory use of scientific spatial information and local spatial knowledge plays an important role in ensuring the effective involvement of actors. Participatory mapping & Participatory-GIS, together with appropriate visualisation techniques, are appropriate techniques for understanding and dealing with spatial conflict issues in land management.

The course is intended for NFP alumni who work in institutions with an on-going involvement in land planning and management or in natural resources management, and in spatial information use and analysis, having preferably GIS competence in-house.

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