The socio-ethical dimensions of spatial information technology
GRASSROOTS REALITIES:
SIT IN LOCAL CONTEXTS
Why map?
The motivations for community-based
mapping include: better planning
resource management; monitoring
development projects; and resolving
resource conflicts within their own
communities. Maps often afford community
members greater or more
detailed knowledge about their
resources, improving their ability to
respond to resource use and conservation
problems. In some cases, the opening
of new political spaces (e.g., by
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decentralization policies in Indonesia
or the recognition of indigenous rights
in the Philippines), provide a context in
which mapping becomes a critical tool
for negotiation with other groups,
including neighboring communities
and the state.
Mapping can re-insert user communities'
existences onto "empty" state
maps, strengthening their claims to
lands & other resources.
Case study writers noted that the
complexity of the processes by which
empowerment occurred and who was
empowered. Mapping enhanced tenure
security in Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia
and the Philippines, yet it also benefited
local governments by providing
them with free information. In
Sarawak, a community map was
instrumental in the legal victory of an
Iban village against a tree plantation
corporation; but this rights-throughmapping
legal power was quickly
curbed as the 2001 Land Surveyors law
was passed to regulate community
mapping. Significantly, several cautioned
difficulties arise in relation to
who "owns" the maps and the information
they contain. If local people do not
have control of their maps, mapping
may afford little if any advantage and
may even leave communities worse off
than before mapping occurred.
Even when communities do control
the maps, mapping can reveal or exacerbate
tensions among the multiple
interests and actors found within communities,
the processes by which decisions
are made within communities,
and the political and economic relationships
between communities and
other social actors.
The case study writer from Sarawak
provided an example in which entrusted
community leaders colluded with a
corporation, using community maps to
support the corporation's plan to lease
customary lands for an oil palm plantation.
Other writers also noted that
NGOs which initiate or sponsor community
mapping projects often play
key roles in influencing which actors
benefit from the adoption of SIT
through deciding, whether to revitalize
traditional customary institutions
(adat) and entrust them with control of
the maps or to bypass traditional leaders
and support a functional committee
on forest conservation. The implications
of these decisions can be far
reaching in the restructuring of power
relations & property institutions that
govern resource access and utilization.
Impacts on Communities' Values
For many indigenous groups in Asia,
the use of SIT in participatory mapping
is intended to "re-insert" their existence
onto maps-to claim rights that had not
been acknowledged by the state. When
resource rights have not previously
been recognized, mapping activities
have greater impact on traditional
ways of governing human/environment
interactions and seeing the
world, than they do in communities
where legal rights exist.
For example, if villagers engage in
mapping to increase the security of
their land claims, they need to follow
through with land titling. But the land
titling process is controlled by outside
authorities, and has significant implications
for the villagers' relations to the
land, their neighbors, and their community.
Mapping efforts initiated to recognize
collective rights to land resources can
lead to land privatization that is in
practice exclusive rather than inclusive.
Researches from Malaysia, Indonesia
and Thailand reported that customary
boundaries were traditionally flexible,
responded to changing needs within
the community, and extended across
administrative boundaries as well as
the boundaries of neighboring communities.
Participants observed that
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echnology
boundaries are now less flexible &
often cause disputes when overlap
with those established by neighbors,
noting as well that it is hard to tell to
what degree alterations in the sense of
place and boundary conceptions are a
function of mapping activities & how
much a function of changes in the political
economic context through the
expansion of roads, markets, decentralization
policies, land tenure, and so on.
SIT and NGOs
Participants noted the crucial role
played by non-government organizations
(NGO) in community-based mapping,
and how external factors were at
least as important as internal ones in
the decisions of NGOs to adopt SIT as an
important component of their activities.
Donors, and how NGOs perceive
donors' priorities, have a relatively
large influence on many NGOs. Two
case study writers described, for example,
how consultants from international
organizations proved to be instrumental
in how NGOs in Indonesia
selected mapping strategies.
Success in using maps as tools for
negotiating land rights in Indonesia
and Malaysia has led to increased
demand for mapping by neighboring
communities. Case study writers from
both countries argued that this has created
a shortage of technically trained
people, and that it is difficult to acquire
and keep trained staff.
There is also a gap in expectations and
work culture between staff members
trained in SIT sciences and those
trained in social sciences that could
lead to the separation of participatory
mapping activities from the broader
objective of NGOs.
Recognizing the potential socio-ethical
impacts of SIT, the participants
agreed that advocates of participatory
mapping need a clear protocol to follow
when introducing SIT into a village.
This protocol should require outside
actors to communicate clearly with
each community prior to the mapping
project. The NGO must clarify the purpose/
objectives of collecting information,
agree with villagers on what information
can be mapped, and explain
potential consequences of recording
the community's spatial information
on maps that can then be copied and
distributed outside the community.
Most importantly, outside facilitators
must communicate to villagers that
they can agree to accept or reject the
mapping exercise.
Finally, participants felt that unlike in
North America, the use of SIT at the
community level in Asia has largely
been limited to producing one-time
maps and neglecting the reality that
working with spatial information is a
process requiring revisions and
changes. Thus far, too little attention
has been given to building local capacity
to revise and remap as circumstances
change.
SUMMARY
The results of our study do not encourage
a general discrediting of the use of
spatial information technology in community-
based management. But they
do establish a need to expose, understand,
and critically assess the degree to
which SIT is not value-neutral and how,
because of this, it may disproportionately
benefit certain users. Fuller understanding
of the social and ethical implications
of SIT are needed to insure that
those who chose to employ it to meet
social objectives can do so wisely and
with awareness of unintended consequences
that may accompany its use.
Reflections by practitioners in the
project case studies identified several
ironic effects of mapping that could
undermine the goals of communitybased
management.
First, it is important to understand as
well that SIT comes in a variety of
forms, and its conceptual and technical
accessibility to participating communities
could be uneven, with the adopting
of technologically complex SIT ironically
serving to marginalize many of the
targeted communities.
Secondly, while mapping is useful for
bounding and staking claims to ancestral
or traditional territories, it also
facilitates a shift toward exclusive
property rights, providing outsiders a
legal means to gain access to common
property resources and potentially
weakening existing common property
management systems.
Finally, mapping generally promotes
practices that shift attention and concern
away from a fluid human/environment
relationship to a relationship
with quantifiable limits implied by
boundaries. Newly acquired authority
to define and exert control over the use
of space may thus compromise the customary
uses and governance systems it
was intended to protect.
Unlike in North
America, the
use of SIT at the
community level in
Asia has largely been
limited to producing
one-time maps.