Adding the third dimension to the negotiating table Giacomo Rambaldi Email: grambaldi@iapad.org Abstract: Since anthropisation of earth, humans have been increasingly competing for finite resources such as land and water. Their occurrence and access have been used to exert power and authority, and influence and enact policies and decisions concerning public life, and economic and social development. An uncountable series of conflicts took place because of their disputed distribution pattern and rights of access. As early as 2200 BC 1 humans tried to document and legalize their access by the use of maps, a geographic representation of earth or portion of it that has since been considered as authored collection of information, and accorded due and sometimes un-due respect and credibility. Physical three-dimensional models have a special place in cartographic history, because of their essentially military function. In recent times the use of relief models opened up to the public mainly as vehicle for information exchange between planners and/or government institutions and between these and the public. The latest development in the use of 3D maps and associated GIS components evolved in South-East Asia at the end of the ‘80s. Spatial tools, including sketch mapping, transect diagramming, participatory aerial photo-interpretation and modelling gained an increasingly important role since governing bodies and policy makers have been paying increasing attention to the relationships between the territory and its inhabitants, the resources and their users and/or customary custodians. Indeed these tools acquired additional relevance with the diffusion of Global Positioning Systems (GPS), the onset of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the associated attempts made by many researchers, negotiators and facilitators, to assimilate GPS and GIS into participatory research, negotiation and planning processes. In order to translate cognitive maps into high quality geo-referenced information, P3DM has been used in conjunction with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Geographic Information Systems 2 (GIS). This brought about reproducing people’s knowledge in a cartographic, mobile and reproducible format accepted at institutional level as part of a negotiation process. The concurrence of both technical (P3DM integrated with GPS and GIS) and social-organisational elements (intensive NGO advocacy and the existence of an ad hoc policy environment), have been instrumental to improving the capacity of communities to interact with national and international institutions and finally to induce substantial nation-wide change 3 in terms of resource allocation and management. Incorporating geo-referenced people’s knowledge into a conflict negotiation process and reproducing it in cartographic format proved to generate information which could place community and formal knowledge at comparable levels, thus facilitating the interaction of minority groups with institutions and their active role in governance. The paper examines the historic evolution of relief modelling over a period of almost 600 years and focuses on recent development where Participatory 3-D Models coupled to GIT have been instrumental in South-east Asia and particularly in the Philippines to inducing substantial change in the interaction between formal institutions and civil society; have shaped the overall national legal framework and the way indigenous peoples’ rights are currently recognized. 1 The earliest known example of cartographic relief representation is found in a clay tablet that dates 2200 B.C known as the "Nuzi map”. 2 When brought at community level, GIS applications are hardly manageable and strongly depend on outsiders’ skills and facilities. In this context Participatory 3-D Modelling (P3DM) may be considered as a bridge between the public and GIS technologies. In fact P3DM merges GIS-generated data and peoples’ knowledge to produce stand-alone relief models. These provide local stakeholders with an efficient, user-friendly and relatively accurate spatial learning and negotiation device, the information from which can be extracted and further elaborated by the GIS. 3 In turn this change originated new conflicts involving (a) mining companies claiming rights to mine areas within ancestral domains and (b) challenges posed to the “constitutionality’ of the IPRA law.