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COPYRIGHT 2005 Royal Geographical Society
Introduction
This study addresses participatory-GIS (PGIS) and participatory mapping in participatory spatial planning applications for community-based natural resource management. It queries the implicit assumption that the participatory application of GIS at the local level is effective, simultaneously meeting the content needs and satisfying the underlying interests of stakeholders, and thus is a tool for better governance. We use 'good governance' dimensions (Figure 1) in an ex-post evaluation of the process of applying PGIS in the planning and authentication of a Community Forest Management (CFM) project.
In the first section we critically review PGIS applications in local level Natural Resource Management (NRM) in developing countries in terms of participation and good governance. The following section assesses the application of PGIS over a period of years in a community forest management project in Tinto, Cameroon, by employing key dimensions of good governance. The third section concludes by discussing salient issues in empowerment impacts and functional effectiveness in PGIS processes that should contribute to well-governed resource management.
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Participatory spatial planning and good governance: principles and practices
PGIS and participatory mapping have two decades of applications in participatory spatial planning, whether manifested as rural-located 'community-based natural resources' (for examples, see Poole 1995; McCall 2004), or as 'participatory neighbourhood planning' in urban settings (for examples, see Craig et al. 2002; McCall 2003):
* 'Claiming land'--legal recognition of customary land and resource rights, or demarcating neighbourhood boundaries.
* Management of customary land and resources, usually under 'traditional' management systems.
* Managing competition and ameliorating conflicts.
* Mapping social and environmental inequalities.
* 'Building community', strengthening community awareness and cultural identity.
Participation is a key element among the criteria of 'good governance' for effective participatory spatial planning. Governance is a set of measures of the relationships between the 'governed' (civil society and the public) and the 'governing' (the government, its institutions, and private sector interests). The pertinent power relationships are those involving policy setting, decision-making, planning and implementation. Core concepts for understanding governance are accountability--closely related to legitimacy, and effectiveness, and within these concepts are categories such as lawfulness and subsidiarity and inclusion (or participation). But, 'good' governance is hard to define unambiguously, since it introduces relativist political and ethical categories and priorities--the prescriptive contextual questions are as follows. Accountability for what types of actions? Legitimacy for what ends? Effective for whose purposes? (See discussions in, for example, Aubut (2004), Goetz and Gaventa (2001), van Kersbergen and van Waarden (2001), OECD (2001) and UNDP (1997).)
The analysis in this paper is based on a set of characteristics and dimensions of good governance which incorporate prescriptive objectives and initiatives to strengthen civil society in order to make the governing more accountable, more transparent (open policy-setting and decisions), responsive, and effective. Thus we follow the more progressive goal-directed interpretations of good governance of the OECD (2001) and UNDP (1997). Accountability, legitimacy and effectiveness, therefore, are interpreted as the means towards political-ethical higher values of strengthening legitimacy of the governing, empowering the governed especially the marginalized, creating respect for rights, ensuring ownership (of geo-information), emphasizing equity, and reinforcing competence in dealing with geo-information.
Legitimacy and participation
Legitimacy demands interactive participation throughout the spatial planning processes, by all stakeholders, in all stages from problem prioritization, data collection, spatial analysis, through to decision-making. 'All stakeholders' here implies the commercial sector and government agencies, as well as civil society, community representatives, traditional leaders and NGOs. 'Homogeneous' communities cannot be presumed when there are significant ethnic, economic class, socio-cultural, and gender divisions. Essential questions about legitimacy are: 'Who controls the types, analysis, and uses of data and knowledge?' 'Who handles the spatial data and information?' 'Is there open access to the spatial planning instruments?' 'Who uses, and, who has access to, the outputs?' 'Who is actively participating?'
Participation in PGIS can be characterized both into types and intensities (cf. participation ladders of, for example, Arnstein 1969; McCall 1988 2003; Catley 1999; Ingles et al. 1999; Carver 2003), from lowest to highest.
* Manipulative and passive participation involving information flows between local people and 'outsiders', regarding primarily technical information, such as resource assessment, e.g. participatory mapping in many rapid rural appraisal exercises.
* Consultation or functional participation--outsiders refer selected, focused issues to local stakeholders, and interpret their responses into 'scientific' frame-works, such as maps of 'needs'.
* Interactive involvement in decision-making by all actors in most stages--'participation seen as a right, not just as the means to achieve outsiders' project goals.'
* Initiating actions--independent initiatives from, and 'owned' by, local people; or self-mobilization. This is a strong indicator of empowerment.
Empowerment
The four intensities of participation can be seen as related to underlying intentions of whatever agencies are 'pushing' participatory spatial planning--or PGIS or participatory mapping--as a strategy. At one extreme is 'facilitation', when participation is promoted to introduce and lubricate outside programmes, whilst the other extreme is 'empowerment', where participation is intended to prioritize local decision-making and reinforce responsibilities. Coming in between is 'mediation' or 'collaboration', where the intention is for the participatory approach to trade-off the interests and priorities of outside projects and local people. An 'empowerment functionality' of PGIS approaches should give voice to local people by putting them and their indigenous technical and spatial knowledge on an equal footing with the external experts.
There are many examples of 'empowerment' PGIS used to 'claim our land', that is, the demand for legal recognition of customary land and resource rights (cf. Poole 1995; McCall 2004). For instance; in Guyana, Amerindian peoples claimed ancestral land titles (Griffiths 2002); the Zuni pueblo of New Mexico prepared digital maps of 'non-graphic descriptions' of their appropriated lands to receive a quarter of a million acres as compensation (Marozas 1991); in the Philippines, claiming Ancestral Domain Title is conditional on preparing a resource management map for the area (Rambaldi and Callosa-Tarr 2002); and in Indonesia, participatory mapping and PGIS identify traditional village territories and competing rights claims (Eghenter 2000; Sirait et al. 1994).
Respect for local peoples and their local and indigenous knowledge
Indigenous knowledge is a measure of local community capability, with the potential to set community members on an equal status with outsider 'experts', and maybe the only resource of which local groups, especially the 'resource-poor', have unhindered ownership. Indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge frequently have similar cognitive structures, although the referents and units may be difficult to translate--as with, for instance, much indigenous technical knowledge (ITK) of pest management, soil and water conservation, ethnopedology, ethno-veterinary knowledge and ethno-medicine. Indigenous technical knowledge is normally more reliable, and maybe also more accurate, because it embodies generations of practical essential knowledge, and it operates in interactive, holistic systems.
Many examples of PGIS--applied to ethnopedology--can be found; for instance, comparison of farmers' and scientific soil classifications in the Senegal River valley (Tabor and Hutchinson 1994), a 'folk expert system' for classifying soils in the Colca Valley, Peru (Furbee 1989), and an extensive review by Barrera-Bassols and Zinck (2000). Another common natural resource management field using PGIS to map indigenous technical knowledge is pastoral management, e.g. remotely sensed images interpreted with Bedu shepherds in Jordan (Patrick 2002); and mapping indigenous knowledge of grazing lands in Burkina Faso (Sedogo 2002).
Beyond indigenous technical knowledge, there is indigenous knowledge that is apparently qualitatively different from scientific knowledge. This indigenous knowledge is symbolic, metaphoric, and visionary--mystical in 'scientific' terms--and commonly related to the land and land features. This deep knowledge, with its obligations of stewardship of the land, together with the specialized, location- and resource-specific, problem-oriented indigenous technical knowledge, provide a basis for local people's participation in resource management.
Respect for indigenous spatial knowledge and people's cognition of land
Indigenous or local spatial knowledge is specific and ongoing knowledge about the land and land resources, and local people's management of them. It is usually problem and solution oriented, it sets people in their environmental context by describing activity spaces and responsibility spaces, and uses an understood natural language. Often enough there are functional connections between indigenous spatial knowledge and 'scientific' explanations, as in customary restrictions on using 'sacred land' which is also a traditionally protected forest or grazing reserve.
Land and place, however, have visceral cultural values, on a...
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