FoxHershockMappingCommunities

BUILDING LOCAL CAPACITY IN USING SIT
FOR NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN EAST SUMBA, INDONESIA
mapping project would be largely futile. One wonders if
the cautions exercised by mapping consultants and
facilitators in this project were unjustified. For example,
while it was important to protect information on the
location of unique resources or sacred sites, other
geographic features and boundaries are not proprietary
and could have been shared with other stakeholders. A
GIS could easily handle this type of concern, and remove
any layer of information deemed sensitive by community
members. Unfortunately, because only hard copies were
available, it was difficult to separate sensitive information
from the base data. The problem was exacerbated by the
conceptual and physical distance between the
communities and stakeholders in Sumba and the mapping
consultants in Jakarta and Honolulu, and by the fact that
funding for the project was exhausted before revised maps
could be made, discussed with villagers, and made
available to government agencies.
This controversy points to the critical need of addressing
the question of map ownership early in any community
mapping initiative, and to clarify to all both the objectives
and risks of recording spatial information on maps. While
the project did consult villagers throughout the mapping
process, it was difficult for villagers who had not been
exposed to maps to fully comprehend the implications.
CONCLUSION
The experience of working with sketch mapping in Sumba
shows that maps and mapping have potential for helping
local communities to manage their natural resources.
Confronted with regional boundary disputes against the
state, community advocates realized that community maps
must also abide by cartographic standards in order for them
to be recognized in formal negotiations. The project we
examined in this paper was designed to build local capacity
in managing spatial information to achieve these two broad
objectives.
Mapping, participatory or otherwise, introduces a concept
that is not yet familiar to most villagers in Indonesia. To
effectively work with maps, one must first overcome this
barrier. The project's experience highlights the difficulty in
bridging conceptual gaps among diverse stakeholders in
participatory mapping. This difficulty is exacerbated by the
need to elevate the technical sophistication of participatory
mapping in order to enhance its legitimacy. While the shift
from crude sketch mapping to technical maps that abide by
cartographic standards may lend credibility in boundary
negotiations against the state, it reduces the engagement
of most community members and their ability to use the
maps as they see fit. As a result, even though the mapping
was participatory in the sense that community members
were consulted and involved throughout the process, many
ended up becoming alienated and did not feel that they
“owned” the resulting maps.
The initial objective of the project was to enhance the
capacity of consortium member organizations to utilize
spatial information to better understand the problems of
communities that lived within or near protected areas. The
reorientation toward more technical mapping however led
to the alienation of other organizations within the
consortium. In the absence of reliable spatial data,
mapping facilitators and technicians needed to produce
base maps and therefore focused on the collection and
accuracy of spatial data. Their activities became separated
from activities that focused on grassroots organizing and
community development. As a result, participatory
mapping failed to be integrated into the broader objective
of consortium member organizations.
The project managed to produce excellent GIS maps with
the help of community members and to encourage villagers
to “tell their own stories” through “their own maps.” But
the project failed in many important respects. The project
attempted to build local capacity through training a few
staff members in skills to acquire and manage spatial data,
and through providing basic equipment for a GIS lab. The
project's experience shows the complexity of personnel
management and inter-organizational dynamics of a loose
network such as the consortium. At the end of the project,
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