FoxHershockMappingCommunities

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DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL COMMUNITY CAPACITY THROUGH SPATIAL INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: THE CASE OF TRINITY COMMUNITY GIS have been thirty-six participants in three sessions to date. Further, TC GIS works with and has trained fifteen regional partners such as tribes and other community-based organizations. Finally TC GIS has sought to make the community at large aware of SIT concepts and the existing capacity available to the general public. Overall, more than one hundred fifty people have been formally trained to some extent, with others reached individually or through collaborative groups or organizations, ranging from an hour long discussion to workshops or conferences lasting two or more days to formal semester long courses for community college credit. Job Creation–What happened with the people TC GIS trained The initial assumption that jobs related to SIT would become available through local national forest offices as they began to implement ecosystem management proved to be unrealistic. TC GIS itself received only three USFS SIT related contracts in ten years, and the RCD also performed only a limited amount of USFS SIT work. One large timber company with extensive lands in the area also centralized its GIS capacity elsewhere. People who went from TC GIS training to more advanced SIT college work have all had to leave the area to find jobs in SIT. In Trinity County today, the RCD employs one full time and one part time GIS technician, and some of their workers are trained in SIT as are some of the WRTC crews. The County Planning Department hired a full time GIS staff person in 2002 who may soon be looking for an assistant. Both of the full time SIT users in the county received some training in college, had other job related experience elsewhere, and participated in TC GIS training. The USFS currently employs two people in SIT at the local level; however, when these people retire this year, the positions will be lost as USFS SIT is now centralized at the forest level about 100 km away. Additional specialists use SIT occasionally in their work, reducing demands for a full scale GIS shop. Some of these people received training from TC GIS. TC GIS employs two people part time. This handful of local GIS users communicate, share data and experiences, and occasionally collaborates on SIT related projects. Thus, SIT expertise in Trinity County today is somewhat decentralized, with professionals located in various agencies and NGOs. In addition, some private individuals who have become adept at using GIS and/or GPS use them for managing their own land. The fact that SIT employment seems to have stabilized at current levels implies that SIT capacity is probably saturated for the time being, adequately serving the growth in community capacities it has contributed to so far, especially as more people provide their own occasional needs for SIT. Only the current county budget crunch has prevented the Planning Department from hiring an assistant GIS technician to serve the growing demands of county departments for SIT products as they become more familiar with the technology and its possibilities. photo: C. Fall, 2001 83
CONCLUSIONS SIT training provides people and communities with tools that can be used for more sophisticated understanding of place and location. SIT products, especially maps, can be used to alert people to situations and opportunities and can help them to work together and find common ground through their connectedness. In the Trinity County, California case, SIT tools have produced a number of changes. Community mapping has led to increased opportunities for public involvement, for utilizing specialized local knowledge, and for addressing local concerns. SIT training has produced more sophisticated understanding and participation from the general public in collaborative natural resource project planning. This is particularly true in the Fire-Safe program's use of participatory mapping. Communities began to understand common locations and problems and currently available resources. SIT capacity in some cases has allowed Trinity County to compete for and capture scarce resources; for example, a number of SIT-based fire management planning proposals, e.g., for fuels reduction, have received federal funding and have been implemented on the ground. Property institutions in the U.S. are fairly static. In California, the only places where SIT might produce changes in legal status are in the case of the mapping of ancestral territories with the Nor-Rel-Muk Nation, which is seeking federal recognition as a tribe, and the case of the Trinity River water allocations disputes which will probably continue for many years. SIT was also used in the case of a pesticide spraying violation that led to a settlement rather than a court decision and some funding for the development and implementation of a county water quality monitoring plan. SIT in California generally does not cause boundary disputes because of the reasonably settled nature of property law but can clarify land use issues, make for more sophisticated discussions, and facilitate finding common ground. In terms of economic development, the Trinity area is severely depressed. SIT has provided some help in this area, facilitating project planning and proposal development. Especially in the case of the fire-safe program, the use of SIT has helped to identify problem areas and develop project proposals for firebreaks and fuels reductions, leading to funding and the implementation of projects. Training the work force and developing SIT capacity has also made it possible for the RCD and the WRTC to bid successfully for work in natural resource planning, inventories, development, rehabilitation, and monitoring. The California case has shown that the community capacitybuilding model of technology diffusion does work to build capacity and empower the public. TC GIS is unable to say that it does so better than the consultant model, but the approach used has resulted in a decentralization of SIT capacity in the county and did not create dependence upon one commercial source for SIT. Advances in computer hardware have made it possible to house SIT capacity on consumer PCs (personal computers). There are also more types of increasingly sophisticated mapping software, which tends to lower some financial and technical barriers to SIT development. A centralized expert model could have been too expensive to achieve similar social capacity building results: for instance, a business might not have been able to provide the same level of skills at low cost or on a volunteer basis to the Trinity County Fire-Safe Council. Centralization probably would not have produced the same levels of community access, involvement, and utilization. TC GIS has been a model of collaboration and cooperation on several levels. The Trinity County community already had good capacity for cooperation and collaboration (e.g., TBRG) and was able to find and develop SIT when it became more widely available. The above average to enthusiastic assessment of TC GIS' role in SIT dissemination from those who chose to respond to the survey is one measure of local residents' appreciation. Those who now use SIT in Trinity County represent a wide range of people from local 84
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MAPPINGCOMMUNITIES ETHICS, VALUES,
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TABLE OF CONTENTS vi vii viii 1 11
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ACRONYMS AMA: adaptive management a
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INTRODUCTION MAPPING POWER: IRONIC
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COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PARTICIPATORY
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APPENDIX I: FORMAL INTERVIEWS AND G
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APPENDIX II: RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND
Page 37 and 38:
land-use plans in various stages of
Page 39 and 40: egan to argue that these areas were
Page 41 and 42: conflicts. The NTFP also assists vi
Page 43 and 44: illegal logging activities and to s
Page 45 and 46: property is defined according to th
Page 47 and 48: the real outside pressure has not y
Page 49 and 50: 7. How well do NTFP staff members u
Page 51 and 52: further and further away from areas
Page 53 and 54: Methods Projecting aerial photograp
Page 55 and 56: RESEARCH QUESTIONS The underlying q
Page 57 and 58: In Samout Krom Village, villagers h
Page 59 and 60: who have not attended the sketch ma
Page 61 and 62: concrete sensorial experiences much
Page 63 and 64: CONCLUSION Based on mapping researc
Page 65 and 66: BACKGROUND According to the MIGIS p
Page 67 and 68: many schools, resulting in the clos
Page 69 and 70: members, the Beima, and villagers'
Page 71 and 72: tree cutting and animal grazing in
Page 73 and 74: the bio-gas project that was implem
Page 75 and 76: During the evaluation process we al
Page 77 and 78: 1 Mr. Zhao Yaqiao, Ms. Wu Chengrui,
Page 79 and 80: Events / Dates Bio-gas systems cons
Page 81 and 82: communities to take advantage of SI
Page 83 and 84: Hayfork based NGO focused on commun
Page 85 and 86: likely to be more knowledgeable abo
Page 87 and 88: planning processes, especially with
Page 89: and implement projects. Some NGOs a
Page 93 and 94: REFERENCES California Fire Safe Cou
Page 95 and 96: map strengthened the community's cl
Page 97 and 98: 1994 and 1995 with community mapper
Page 99 and 100: to the mapping. These disagreements
Page 101 and 102: CONCLUSIONS For too long now, the D
Page 103 and 104: APPENDIX B The table below lists th
Page 105 and 106: uncritically or simply misused. As
Page 107 and 108: However, the equipment acquired for
Page 109 and 110: degrees in social sciences, agricul
Page 111 and 112: photo: Martin Hardiono photo: Marti
Page 113 and 114: REFERENCES Herlihy, P. H., and G. K
Page 115 and 116: eserve boundaries, develop a common
Page 117 and 118: NGO that focused on facilitating co
Page 119 and 120: left their organizations within a y
Page 121 and 122: eadily use the available computer a
Page 123 and 124: local capacity both in terms of ski
Page 125: Nusa Tenggara Community Development
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