Martin Hardiono, H. Radandima, Krisna Suryanata, and Jefferson Fox

1. From Sketch Mapping to GIS:Challenges to Capacity Building of Grassroots Organizations in Indonesia Martin Hardiono, H. Radandima, Krisna Suryanata, and Jefferson Fox

2. Participatory mapping • An increasingly important tool for grassroots communities • To better plan resource management • To give more knowledge about their resources • To resolve conflicts within their own communities • To legitimize customary claims to resources

3. Participatory mapping: • Encourages villagers to draw and model their territories and resources as a means to negotiate their rights • Strongly shaped by the relationships between villagers and mapping facilitators • Most mapping facilitators in Indonesia came from outside the community • staff of NGO / University

4. Unintended consequences of mapping • Loss of indigenous conceptions of space • Shift from communal to individual property regimes • Facilitate co-optation by outside interests/the State • Forces issues and boundaries • Increased conflict between and within communities

5. Participatory mapping produces: • Simple sketch maps • Maps with cartographic references and coordinates • Computer-based Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

6. Case study Sumba

7. East Sumba, Indonesia • Dominated by a semi-arid climate • Soil conservation a serious concern • Designated as bio-diversity conservation area (Wanggameti National Park) in 1984

8. Local Institutional Actors • Nusa Tenggara Community Development Consortium • A loosely organized network of government agencies, domestic and international NGOs, universities, and community representatives of key conservation sites in Nusa Tenggara • Met annually to share information, synthesize lessons learned, define collaborative activities

9. Participatory Mapping in Nusa Tenggara • Introduced by The World Neighbors • Sketch mapping as a planning tool in soil conservation • Communicated and adopted by other Consortium members • Facilitated communication among farmers and enhanced participation • Community maps were valuable when negotiating boundaries with the National Park • Effective for local negotiation, but more ‘formal’ maps were required to deal with the State

10. Capacity building for mapping • A project funded by the Ford Foundation • To improve the capacity for regional organizations to collect, analyze and distribute spatial information • Project objectives • Training local professionals • Building regional GIS capacity, and • Producing community-based maps

11. Digital data processing • Requires basic computer skills and analytical capability • Must work with multiple sources of data, choose from a variety of software, and keep up with the (rapid) development of computing technology • The project provided intensive training to a few key staff, followed by a series of field workshops involving more trainees

12. Problems in training • Focusing capacity development on a few key individuals is vulnerable to arbitrary personnel changes • Trainees are not always prepared for the rigorous demand imposed by data gathering (surveys in rough terrain, or tedious tasks of digitizing maps) • Disjointed knowledge / skill transfer due to rotations among NGO staff attending the training sessions • Distorted wage market because skills in spatial information analysis are highly valued and relatively scarce in Indonesia

13. Building a Regional Spatial Information Center • To share (expensive) equipments and data necessary for managing spatial information • The Regional Center would be placed within one of the Consortium member organizations • Trained core staff would facilitate access by Consortium members

14. Problems with SIT Center • Lack of stable core staff to facilitate the interface between users and spatial data • The development of computing technology and spatial data quickly made the Center’s hardware obsolete • Reiterates the critical need to provide continuing support to local NGOs and community members (general troubleshooting, how to adapt to evolving technology, how to identify and acquire new data)

15. Producing Community-based Maps • The exercise was part of the training to produce maps • It focused on how to accurately document information onto maps • Less attention given to “map socialization” – how to use maps and map making for addressing tangible concerns of the community

16. Conceptual Gaps regarding Maps • Sketch maps are familiar to most villagers • Cartographic maps and other types of spatial information are more difficult to understand • Villagers can readily contribute the information to be mapped, but not comprehend the meaning (and usefulness) of these maps

17. Sharing the maps (or not…) • 15 village maps, showing village customary boundaries, land use and vegetation cover, sacred and protected areas, and other resource patterns • No agreement regarding control and access over this valuable information • Villagers keep the hardcopies, but their utility is limited

18. At the end of the project… • Villagers’ capacity in understanding how maps can assist their needs is still limited • The Regional SIT Center became obsolete with no stable core local staff capable in spatial information management and analysis • A number of high quality maps and GIS are available but not effectively shared (and used) because the technical capacity is absent at the local level