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Can Participatory-GIS Strengthen Local-level Spatial Planning? Suggestions for Better Practice
In practice, one can analyse separately the mapping activities, and the planning or decision elements, of a PSP process. Deep P-GIS ideally should incorporate both; that is, the degree and intensity of the participation in the mapping/GIS elements should influence the priorities, outcomes and decisions made in the PSP. But in reality this is unlikely.
Participation in the Good Governance context
To pre-empt the conclusions from reviewing myriad cases - participation is the key and the essence to P-mapping and P-GIS. The participation is more fundamental than ‘the Map’ or ‘the GIS’. ‘Deep’ participation should impregnate through the whole sequence and the whole system – including the implementation and the changes afterwards.
However, the further one questions ‘participation’, the more of a Pandora’s box is opened. Participation is seen in most contemporary literature as normative and essential, it is uncritically accepted as a ‘best practice’, but in reality it can be an obfuscation. It is the appearance of participation that often matters more than the reality, as an ‘opiate of the masses’. Participatory planning (and P-GIS) are all too frequently used to legitimise decisions which in fact were taken externally. (Sect. 4.1)
In the wider societal context, participation is a central element of good governance dimensions [ ]:
- accountability & legitimacy (includes ‘ownership’ of the outputs and process, among other conditions),
- competence (both the effectiveness of outputs, and the facility for local management),
- respect (for local knowledge & skills, as well as for local stakeholders and their interests),
- and, a degree of equity (among the stakeholder groups).
Participation in P-GIS, as in other processes, can be characterised into four degrees or intensities. This does not imply that participation should strive always for maximum intensity, but the intensity should be appropriate to the tasks, competencies and the specific relationships between actors in a PSP (participatory spatial planning) context.
From lowest to highest, the four intensities can be categorised in terms of a participation ladder as follows, with some P-GIS applications:
- Information Sharing. One- or two-way communication between ‘outsiders’ and local people, involving primarily technical information, such as baselines or status reports. Although the topics are pre-determined by outside agencies, even this level needs a (low) degree of participation in making maps, primarily in eliciting or exploiting local people’s knowledge of for instance, resources.
Examples such as National Wastelands mapping in India, (Hutchinson & Toledano 1993); IMSD (Puri 2003)
- Consultation. Outsiders refer selected issues to local stakeholders for refinement or prioritising. External agents pre-define the salient problems before consultation, and the analysis into scientific knowledge is controlled by outside.
Examples include mapping of community ‘needs’ or ‘demands’ in PRA exercises, or say ITK in ethnobotany or ethnopedology.
- Involvement in Decision-making by all actors. Interaction between internal (local) and external actors who jointly identify priorities, analyse current status, select alternatives, and implement. Participation is seen as a right, not just as the means to achieve a project’s goals. But it is still basically externally-initiated.
E.g. mapping community’s priority areas (Chattopadhyay et al. 1996) in Kerala; ‘setting the map legend’. (Werner et al. South Africa; Rambaldi in Philippines)
- Initiating Actions. Independent initiatives from, and ‘owned’ by, local people, and self-mobilisation to perform relevant activities. This is categorically different from simply implementation with local people’s labour inputs. If full participation is construed at all stages, this is an indicator of empowerment, this implies control of the whole GIT process – from problem prioritisation, geodata collection, spatial analysis, through to map representation and subsequent decision-making.
Many examples from the “Aboriginal Mapping Network”, a community of participatory mappers and P-GIS’ers among First Nations groups in Canada and the US. ( www.nativemaps.org)
Evaluating the Applications of P-Mapping and P-GIS www.nativemaps.org
Frequently an assumption is made that participation, as an element of good governance will inexorably and naturally lead to an improved planning system. But to evaluate this assumption in relation to the 500 or so applications of P-mapping, five primitive questions can be phrased very simply -:
- Why, in any particular instance, is a participatory approach being applied to the acquisition, interpretation, use, etc. of geo-spatial information?
- Who is involved? At what stages?
- What geospatial information is going in, and being processed? What GI products are coming out?
- When? - what types of GIT and what GIT activities, at which phases of PSP?
- How does it function?
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