FoxHershockMappingCommunities

EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES THROUGH MAPPING:
EVALUATION OF PARTICIPATORY MAPPING IN TWO HANI VILLAGES, YUNNAN PROVINCE, P. R. CHINA
for several days continuously, and finally most villagers agreed
to construct a new road by themselves. They also decided
that villagers from Shang Shapu Village could not access the
new road after it was built. The road was about four
kilometers from the main road to Xia Shapu Village and took
more than two months to build. Unfortunately the road was
cut off again in some sections because of several days' heavy
rain only one month after it was opened. Ultimately, neither
Shang Shapu nor Xia Shapu Villages ended up using it.
In September 2002, the township government organized
the two villages to construct a third road. It was developed
in November 2002. However, it was destroyed again in
June 2003.
Villagers from both villages felt very sad when we discussed
the road issue. They complained that it was not acceptable
without a road because they must truck in materials to build
a house; they also preferred decreasing the labor burden to
improve living conditions. However, most people who took
part in the meeting agreed that a new road could not be
constructed since it already occupied many areas and had
brought so many soil erosions and hill collapses. They
agreed to repair the first road with higher quality
construction material.
The above discussion invites the question of how local
governments may provide concrete support to local
communities based upon this kind of study. It seems to us
that the villagers themselves cannot deal with some
technical issues, such as for instance, the design of the road.
They really need help from others, including NGOs. Another
question the above discussion raises is how action research
can really help local communities accomplish something. Do
we leave local communities with only suggestions or with
some practical and detailed design It could make problems
worse if we just told them what they should do rather than
offered detailed guidance on how to do it; otherwise we
may create new problems and conflicts for the community.
Tree plantation. Villagers told us that they planted trees
before 1999. However these were “tasks” allocated by the
township government. They also mentioned that there were
big changes after the MIGIS mapping activities. In the past,
there were only six or seven households that planted trees on
their contracting hills, under individual titles. 8 We were told
about 80 percent of the forest was owned and managed by
collectives, and only 20 percent was allocated to individual
households as contracting hills. However, after the MIGIS
mapping activities, two villages decided to close the hills for
forest generation and to plant trees on bare places.
There were two major reasons for this according to villagers
who participated in the group meetings. The first was that
some households earned an economic return from their
private forest land 9 ; the second was that they recognized the
problems of environment degradation from the MIGIS
mapping process.
Villagers said that during the mapping process a group of
people compared the different situations in 1990 and 1999.
They finally agreed that about half of the forests
disappeared in the ten years. They mentioned that the
MIGIS group expert show them the land-use patterns for
both 1990 and 1999 on a computer and said that more than
60 percent rather than 50 percent of the forests disappeared
in the ten years. The MIGIS group also discussed with them
what would happen if the forests could not be protected
effectively. Some villagers thought that they would have
more soil erosion. The village headman from Shang Shapu
said that “because of the MIGIS mapping activities, we may
now see that many trees were destroyed and disappeared
on the collective forestry land. We did not know how serious
the situation we were facing was. We know now we should
plant more trees after we saw so many maps during and
after the mapping activities.”
Villagers told us that both villages had several meetings to
discuss the environment issue and decided to close hills for
forest generation and to plant trees, as well to revise and
implement villagers' regulations and rules. This means
mapping gave them very strong reasons to decide to stop
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