2011 FINALIST Participatory Mapping as a Means of Protecting Forests in the Congo Basin
“This project empowers local forest communities to use cutting edge technologies to map their lands and resources and use this evidence as advocacy and negotiation tools for more secure land tenure. Through this, it also serves as an effective tool to contribute to environmental protection and poverty reduction efforts.�
Assessment Summary from the BFI Review Team This project runs under the aegis of the Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) with partner organizations in 5 Congo Basin countries, and seeks to empower local forest communities by teaching them to use GIS mapping technologies to map their traditional lands and resources (including sites of cultural, historical and spiritual significance) to help solidify their land tenure, organize their communities effectively, defend their rights, contribute to environmental protection, and reduce poverty. What makes this project innovative is not the use of cutting-edge mapping technologies and the participation of indigenous communities in the mapping process (these were pioneered in the Amazon region quite a few years ago), but the scale of the project across multiple national boundaries and ethnic groups in a vast bioregion (the world’s second biggest remaining rainforest) that faces far more socio-political instability and intense poverty than almost any region on the planet, and that receives far less attention than Amazonia. Some of the lands involved are historically the highly threatened homelands of “Pygmy” groups, perhaps the oldest continuous culture on Earth. African forests are being destroyed at a faster clip than South America’s, as ruthless extractive industries, large-scale logging, corruption, wars, and weak protections for indigenous and local inhabitants take massive tolls. Forest communities are often wrongly identified as drivers of deforestation when in fact very often their traditional land management practices offer the best hope of protecting forests. The process of participatory mapping brings communities together intergenerationally, as they draw upon both their traditional knowledge and modern learning to better stake a claim to their ancestral lands. The process also involves workshops and conferences that help communities understand how to navigate local laws and relationships with bureaucracies and governments to defend their rights. Since 2000, the Rainforest Foundation UK and its local partners have worked with some 300 communities, helped produce over 100 maps and trained over 500 GIS technicians from NGOs, governments and forest communities in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo. This effort has produced tangible legal and policy changes for the benefit of many forest communities, giving voice to the hitherto voiceless. They also function as an intermediary with the international efforts led by the United Nation to monitor and protect tropical forests. By gathering the appropriate data and sharing that with international community it helps to leverage the political efforts locally. At this stage the project, which would like to continue moving forward and keep expanding to serve many more forest communities, is only funded through this May (2011) and may have to curtail the scope of its activities if funding can’t be secured.
WEBSITE: http://www.rainforestfoundationuk.org/ VIDEO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSplzS_ME8w&feature=youtu.be&a The video is in French, so a description below. Leonard Odambo, President of MINAPYGA talks about how Participatory Mapping is Supporting Community Rights in Gabon (in French): Second in size only to the Amazon, the Congo Basin rainforest is a vital regulator of regional climate, a carbon store of global significance and a massive reserve of biodiversity, hosting over 10,000 species of plants, 1,000 species of birds and 400 species of mammals. It is also home to up to 40 million forest dependent people including an estimated 500,000 indigenous “Pygmies”, characterized by a largely huntergatherer, semi-nomadic existence. In this video, Leonard Odambo, a leading indigenous peoples’ representative in Gabon, talks about the threats posed by industrial logging and mining, and how participatory mapping is now enabling some of the most disenfranchised communities in Africa to document and secure rights to their traditional lands and resources. He talks of the benefits of mapping, which enables forest people to negotiate with Governments to mitigate the threats that they face.
SOURCES: All Sources are either on the CD provided or can be retrieved online via the link provided. Source Number 1: A link to our website www.mappingforrights.org which is still under construction, and will enable remote forest communities to speak directly to policy makers through interactive maps. Login-in: admin Password: last5savory Source Number 2: http://www.PGIS.net
Entry Application
Participatory Mapping as a Means of Protecting Forests in the Congo Basin Team: Mr Georges Thierry Handja Project Coordinator Mr Joe Eisen Mapping Officer Mr Samuel Dieval Coordinator, Central African Republic and Congo Partner organisations in-country: Mr Jerome Sitamon, Director Maison de l'Enfant et de la Femme Pygmee (Central African Republic) Mr Roger Bouka Owoko, Director Observatoire Congolais des Droits de l'Homme (Republic of Congo) Mr Marc Ona, Director Brainforest (Gabon) Summarize your proposal in 50 words or less: This project empowers local forest communities to use cutting edge technologies to map their lands and resources and use this evidence as advocacy and negotiation tools for more secure land tenure. Through this, it also serves as an effective tool to contribute to environmental protection and poverty reduction efforts. Describe the critical need your solution addresses: Forest communities are often wrongly identified as main drivers of deforestation. On the contrary, it can be clearly demonstrated that their traditional resource management practices can effectively contribute to forest protection. This participatory mapping project addresses fundamental insecurity of land tenure that leaves forest communities vulnerable to exploitation. Explain your initiative in more depth and its stage of development. Please include the inspiration, and/or underlying principles informing your initiative. In the Congo basin, the argument that forest communities’ practices are destructive of the environment is used as a political strategy to pave the way for the use of their lands for large scale industrial logging, mining and other economic initiatives. In the national legislation of Congo basin countries, the State effectively owns all forest land. Local communities, despite the important role the have played for centuries in forest conservation, have little more than user rights to their land and resources. Mapping of lands by States takes place on a macro level, often ignoring the customary use and needs of forest communities at the expense of large economic interests. Participatory mapping is not new. Over the past three decades these practices have emerged as an alternative to empower marginalised groups and those traditionally excluded from decision-making processes. Since 2000, the Rainforest Foundation UK and its local partners have been supporting forest-dependent communities in the Congo Basin region to produce accurate, geo-referenced community maps of their territories and to
use these maps to advocate for the recognition of their rights to manage and protect forest lands. RFUK has produced over 100 maps, trained over 500 people (GIS technicians and mappers from NGOs, government and forest communities) in 5 countries (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo) and has directly benefited more than 18,000 people in forest areas. The work of exchange and dialogue supported by participatory maps is mobilizing the interest of a broad range of partners (communities, NGOs, policy makers and international partners), and promoting legal and policy changes for the benefit of forest communities at various levels. At this stage, it is essential that this work is able to continue in order to ensure that the changes that are on the horizon actually begin to bear fruit. How does your strategy and approach respond creatively and comprehensively to key social, cultural, economic, ecological, and technological issues, which shape the condition you are seeking to transform? Why is your strategy a breakthrough and what makes it a preferred state model? The innovative aspect of our approach lies in the manner in which it addresses the social, cultural and legal specificities of the situation in the Congo Basin, combining capacity building support with the use of appropriate technology to produce evidence to support community-based forest protection. Participatory mapping is based on the premise that the people who live and work in a place have the most intimate knowledge of the place. Local inhabitants posess expert and sophisticated knowledge of their local environment and have different ways of expressing their spatial knowledge. It can be used to: assist communities in promoting traditional land use planning and natural resource management; facilitate communication and negotiation between local communities and external agencies; support communities’ demands to local authorities and address resource-related conflicts; define and negotiate customary land borders and ownership; raise awareness on land and environmental issues; and reinforce community identities and improve intergenerational exchanges. Most importantly, it serves to better define and integrate the concerns of the most vulnerable forest communities – indigenous peoples (the so-called “Pygmy” peoples in the Congo basin) who are severely discriminated against even by their neighbouring forest communities, and often subject to treatment tantamount to forced labour. The results borne out by this approach have surpassed our expectations. Using participatory mapping techniques gives voice to the voiceless, giving substantial value and communication power to local people. When well implemented, this model helps increase the participation of those mainly concerned by the management of natural resources and provides decision makers with relevant information to make more informed decisions. Compare and contrast your initiative with at least two leading initiatives addressing the same critical need. In comparison to these initiatives why is your proposal more likely to effect change and make a distinguishing impact? Our work can be contrasted with numerous initiatives in the Congo Basin that ostensibly aim to map land use and allocate land use rights on that basis. 1)The first is macro land use mapping (zoning) and planning. This is the overarching approach applied by some governments and strict conservation organisations. It ignores
local realities, and thus incurs major risks of excluding and endangering local forest communities, opening up forest lands to the expansion of industrial logging and plantations. The absence of local participation can even result in conflicts. 2)The second is a strict conservation approach to forest lands and resources in the creation and management of protected areas and national parks. Strict conservation has typically not taken into account the fact that community knowledge and local institutions can play a significant role in sustainable forest co-management, and use and conservation of natural resources. Often, strict biodiversity conservation approaches alienate local communities and breed resentment against forest protection. The approach we promote in this project helps realize local development and effective protection and management of natural resources. Describe your implementation plan. What are the priority milestones you intend to achieve in years one (1) through three (3)? The priority milestones we aim to achieve over the next 3 years are based on furthering the work we have done so far, to extend its influence and continue to advocate for the legal reform that is being proposed based on the evidence produced in the community maps. They are: (1) Local NGOs and Government representatives based in the field have the capacity to support communities in the production of evidence of their land use and the customary laws that govern them (2) One hundred and twenty (120) more communities are capable of producing and using concrete evidence of their forest land and resource use and the customary laws that govern it to gain land and resource rights (3) Decision makers are referring to community maps in decision making processes related to forests and land use (4) Communities are able to influence policies makers for stronger laws and regulations that recognize their rights to access, use, and control their lands and resources. Please provide details regarding the team and/or partners you have assembled, the team’s experience and qualifications, and your ability to execute your implementation plan. If applicable, include details about external validation and/or support your strategy has received to date. RFUK’s strategy as an organisation and within the context of this project is to build national capacity to implement participatory mapping, and the associated advocacy activities that use the maps as evidence. Thus, the project involves the following main actors: Local and indigenous forest communities in the selected countries: until now we have worked with over 300 communities, and plan to extend this to 120 more in the next 12 months, and more in subsequent years. These are the cornerstone of the project, providing the overall strategic guidance through the expression of the problems they face and their needs through the mapping process. Local partner NGOs in 5 Congo basin countries: RFUK works through partnerships with key civil society organisations that we have worked with over the years to build their strong reputation in defending community rights and working towards forest protection. These include La Maison de l’Enfant et de la Femme Pygmee in CAR, the Centre Pour l’Environnement et le Développement in Cameroon, and Brainforest in Gabon, whose Director Marc Ona was awarded the Goldman Environmental prize in 2009.
Experts in participatory GIS mapping, participatory approaches and indigenous peoples and human rights constitute the RFUK team. What are the primary obstacles that might prevent your initiative from being realized? How do you plan to overcome them? Vested interests may influence the outcome of ongoing land use allocation, community forest and other policy and legislative processes impacting on community lands. International conservation organizations or logging companies, for example, may attempt to block moves for communities to gain stronger control of their local forests. We have developed a strong relationship with the forest and other relevant ministries that have demonstrated a willingness to support forest communities. The evidence produced by the maps and the training of local NGO and government partners in community rights, and the overall approach of the project are all designed to counteract these interests. We also work with a coalition of other interested actors to advocate effectively for community rights. Much emphasis is also being placed on using traditional governance and management systems as the model for land use allocations. What range of funding is needed to bring your project to fruition and from where do you anticipate funding will come? What is the total annual budget and explain how your initiative will financially sustain itself? Current funding for this project is coming to an end, and in order to be able to sustain the momentum of work that the project has built up, in addition to the continued use of the skills it has generated among the individuals it has trained, it is essential that adequate funding is available to continue this work and expand into new areas that are being identified as priority by local partner organisations for the continuation of capacity building, mapping and advocacy work. For the work to continue to expand and follow up existing ongoing processes in 3 countries it would take an estimated budget of $750,000 per year. For 5 countries, $1,25 million per year. We are also supporting local partners to apply for funds, as well as continuing fundraising efforts within RFUK.
The prospection phase is the first visit to the targeted communities and aims to discuss the project and gather information about the communities including how they access and manage forest resources. During the prospection, project staff work with communities on maps drawn in the ground.
The validation of a participatory map consists of specific work with communities to validate the final version of the map, including the symbols in the legend, the names of the forest camps etc. It is also an opportunity to discuss the strategy to use the map and to plan next steps.
Interview with Jerome Sitamon, Georges Thierry Handja, Francesca Thornberry and , Samuel Dieval of Participatory Mapping as a Means of Protecting Forests in the Congo Basin _______________________________ Other organizations have been using mapping to protect lands and indigenous peoples. Are there aspects of your project that you feel are genuinely innovative compared to other participatory mapping projects worldwide? Jerome: The difference that this project has is not so much in the technology or the social approaches, but that the context is very different in Africa than in Amazonia for example because tribal groups have much less formal recognition at this point than they do in South America so there’s a struggle to even get the rights of tribes recognized and their actual rights defined. In the Central African Republic (CAR) where I am working, the state basically holds the rights to the land and then other organizations or corporate concessions have some rights to the land but the rights of the indigenous populations have not so far been formally recognized for the most part and it’s a struggle to establish those rights. Samuel: Just to elaborate on what Jerome said,
“This is not just a mapping project because it involves helping empower and organize the local indigenous communities so that they become aware of their rights and so it’s a social and political organizing project as well as a mapping one. In a sense, the mapping is a vector to help these populations organize themselves.
This organizational effort permits these groups to engage in conversations with different players, local politicians, the logging concessions, and with some of the national parks or park authorities. So the mapping effort is really an effort not just to organize but to begin these discussions and these debates and to help these populations become more active and able to defend their rights and access to the land. Samuel: There’s a tension in the Congo Basin, especially in the CAR, between the types of rights, which the political authorities are willing to recognize, which are often rights to land use or access but not to the land itself. A lot of these local populations have been living there for millennia but don’t have formal rights to the land. So there’s a tension between customary and traditional occupation of the land and state policies so part of this project is to work on helping resolve that tension more in favor of local people. Is the large scale and multinational aspect (five Congo Basin countries) of the
RFUK mapping effort unique? Are you currently active in all five: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo, or are your projects focused in some more than others? Jerome: Yes they [RFUK] are and they are primarily based in London but they have partners in all five countries but that the level of their activity varies. So they began in Cameroon, but now they’re more active in CAR and the Republic of the Congo and Gabon. Do you think the models you are using are replicable or provide templates for similar initiatives around the world, or are they very specific to the Congo Basin? Jerome: Yes we believe that this model is replicable in other parts of the world and the most important aspect is that it’s not a top down project, but one in which the local communities are very involved in creating and defining the use they want to make of the maps. We’ve also created a handbook, which is something that could be imitated and could be used as a template for how to engage a community with those tools. How does your program work in terms of the relationship between the main organization (NGOs) and the local groups? Samuel: The team is really based in London but we have partner organizations and people such as Jerome who are on the ground and visit the different sites several times a year. We have technical capacity in London but try to impart as much as possible to local partners, and Jerome was saying that they don’t do mapping just for its own sake. What they’re doing is addressing specific issues to resolve.
“We believe that this model is replicable in other parts of the world and the most important aspect is that it’s not a top down project, but one in which the local communities are very involved in creating and defining the use they want to make of the maps. We’ve also created a handbook, which is something that could be imitated and could be used as a template for how to engage a community with those tools.”
An example is the local work we are doing in communities. In CAR there’s a national park, and historically this is an area that indigenous people customary use of, but their rights to access the use of this land and the resources in the park are denied. If they can establish through their mapping their long-term historic use, then they can make a much better case with the political authorities about how to use that land. The idea is as much as possible to get the local people empowered and organized so they are able to use these tools for specific purposes of resource use and advocacy. Do these tribes have a cultural mapping knowledge? Are you relying on historical storytelling? Jerome: The local people do have a sense of mapping but it is within their own cultural context that they’ve developed that. So they can very clearly describe to someone, “our
territories are by this river and these landmarks, and if you want to catch the best game you can go here,” but then the question is of translating that into modern cartographic methods and finding that dialogue between the traditional mapping and the modern mapping. When we first engage with the community, we first discuss very tangible things about the land, and then we show them examples of how mapping has been used in other places, including the Amazon. Part of the process that’s very important to us is engaging the elders, because a lot of the older people who have the in depth knowledge of the land are often illiterate, we want these people to participate because the younger people who are more literate often don’t know the land as well. So we engage in a process whereby we try to keep it very tangible in the beginning and try to bring everyone along so that the older people don’t feel intimidated, and can bring their knowledge to the table and be part of the process. Are the local people left with images and large scale maps with which they can continue to update and put in information into? Are they left with mapping tools or technical tools that they can incorporate themselves to increase their knowledge or teach other villagers? Jerome: Yes, in fact it’s very important that by the time the projects have been completed and there is a definitive map, that the community retains that map and knows how to use it. They should know how to add information to it and use it for the political advocacy that they have to do. So yes, that’s extremely important. How does the mapping work as a political tool? Jerome: in our case in the CAR we got the government involved very early on in the process and they named five engineers to work with us to help with the mapping. The government was a full participant in trying to figure out what the rights and land use of local communities are, so at least in the case of the CAR the government was part of the process of building capacity from the beginning. This has meant that they have been supportive of the process, which is very important in the advocacy aspects of the project. What are you doing to promote bottom up capacity building so people can become decision makers, the community leaders can become decision makers. Jerome: We have a lot of engagement and workshops with the community - not only in determining the mapping but in making them fully aware of what their rights are legally and what international law they can draw on. At a certain point we’ve worked in the community and their local leadership has developed. These communities become much more organized with a an understanding of what their legal rights are and how to lobby for their rights. How many communities do you work in? Jerome: There are about 300 communities with over 18,000 people. That’s all the communities in all five countries in the Congo Basin and that number is growing and of course the more funding we have, the more we can do. Have you been able to help foster cross-ethnic/cross-tribal/cross-regional cooperation and networks in these projects, or is each community solely focused on its own lands and issues?
Samuel: Often these communities are quite isolated in a geographical sense, but we have in fact been able to cross-reference. In the case of this park in Cameroon that has many different tribal and ethnic groups, we got them to come together in meetings to understand that if they present a unified front they can be much more effective in asserting their rights. We have also done regional and national conferences and brought people together so we can share best practices in what one group has done to the extent that it could help another. In other cases, each context can be very different. Have you actually had conflicts with strict conservation groups who want to protect biodiversity and land but are loathe to include local communities in management? Jerome: Yes. With this big national park issue, for example, the national planners and the people running the park were irritated that the question of local peoples’ rights had been raised, so there is a tension between the strict conservation ethos and participation of local people. This is something that’s contested at least in that particular project. Samuel: I just want to say that in general in the Congo Basin in the areas where we are working, there is a problem with strict conservation organizations, which sometimes focus much more on other things than on peoples’ rights. We have been saying to them that we are not against conservation, but we are for a form of conservation that puts the people at its heart. Have you lost any partners or allies in violence in the region, and has the violence been a problem for you? Jerome: No, because the people we work with really know the conditions on the ground, and they’ve been able to avoid problems and know not to go into those areas that are most affected by civil strife, so that has not been a big issue. There are some indirect effects of violence because in certain areas there have been spillovers of armed conflicts so populations are on the move, and sometimes the areas are flooded with populations that are fleeing and they put a lot of pressure on the local flora and fauna and so that can create a lot of tension. The indirect effect can harm the land and create social problems as well. You say that current funding for this project is coming to an end. Do you really have no ongoing funding at all in place for this program? Is this the type of project that invariably requires outside funding because the local forest communities are so impoverished? Samuel: We have funding through May of this year, for three countries, but if the worst comes to the worst and we cannot get funding for all three, we could get funding to continue in only one country, but we’re looking for funds to be able to continue in all five. What is the relationship of your project and/or the region of Congo to the UN’s deal on deforestation (REDD)? Francesca: We also have projects that are working on REDD processes in the Congo Basin, including CAR and Congo. We try to make sure as much as possible that these projects are integrated with our mapping projects. The basic point for us in terms of the
REDD work is that without the concrete safeguards and land rights that will actually reach these communities, then REDD becomes largely pointless. So this is a strong underpinning to our work so our maps can be used in these negotiations to that end. Samuel: We have internal meetings to share knowledge with our other colleagues working on REDD related issues to sneure that we are coordinating the work and everyone has an equal understanding of the issues at stake. There have been technological advances in satellite mapping, are you plugged into that? Specifically how do you do the mapping? Samuel: We follow new developments extremely closely and are currently following discussions on the role of mapping in REDD. We’re looking forward to train our partners on the much more advanced new technology in terms of being able to use satellite images as a forest monitoring tool. One example of a project we are discussing with some donors, is one in which our partners will have the capacity to be able to use this imagery in such a way that they can use it in the discussions on national REDD processes. This is taking place in London where we have the technical capacity but we are now working in training our partners on the ground to also be able to do this. Can you tell us about any 'external verification' your project has received? Has it been tested? Verified? Who knows about it? Jerome: Our project is about to be evaluated by external independent evaluators. We are happy to share those experiences. Should you win, what will you do with the prize monies? Georges Thierry: The main thing we would do is to continue this project. We would extend the work to more communities , train more communities in the Congo Basin to use maps, and empower them to organize themselves to defend their rights. We could continue to help address deforestation in what is the second biggest deforested area in the world, as well as to defend the rights of local people that have been disenfranchised. We would also try to as much as possible collate the best practices that we’ve achieved through this work which is quite unique in the world. A lot of the Europe-based NGOs working on similar issues are not very effective in empowering local people. With the prize money or similar contribution, we can put together a model to empower local people in this part of the world.
The main thing we would do is to continue this project. We would extend the work to more communities , train more communities in the Congo Basin to use maps, and empower them to organize themselves to defend their rights. We could continue to help address deforestation in what is the second biggest deforested area in the world, as well as to defend the rights of local people that have been disenfranchised.
Buckminster Fuller Challenge Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK) Participatory Mapping as Means of Protecting Forest in the Congo Basin Empowerment of Women in Mapping The project targets forest communities as a whole and benefits various gender (women and men) and age (children, young, adult, elderly) groups. The project works with both Bantu and indigenous (so-called “Pygmy”) communities. Both have very different forms of social organisation, means that gender roles differ considerably, impacting on access to resources, participation in decision-making processes and exercise of rights. For example, indigenous communities are traditionally more egalitarian. However, despite this, in general, women rarely voice their opinions in public and men still dominate meetings and decision making. Women are less likely to be educated or have greater workloads to contend with. Where there are issues that impact on these different sub-sections of forest communities differently, the project seeks to explore causes and solutions through participatory approaches, facilitating separate processes with sub-groups if and when necessary. RFUK recognises the cultural sensitivity of addressing gender issues, and aims to strike a difficult balance between ensuring that women are adequately taken into consideration in project design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, whilst at the same time ensuring respect for the traditional cultures of the communities involved in the project. Some of the initial steps taken towards this are: Undertaking a gender analysis to identify inequalities between men and women that need to be addressed. Providing equal opportunities to all and carrying out gender specific action where inequalities are found. Giving girls and women a voice through various actions such as: mapping separately with men and women to identify areas and resources that both sexes use, and the overlaps between them; undertaking separate consultations and activities with women where necessary, to ensure their participation. Designing strategies and indicators for the achievement of gender equality. We map with both men and women of different age groups and social standing in the community using participatory approaches, facilitating separate processes with sub-groups. For example, this may be done by providing a space to women to prepare their own community map, which is generally more detailed and quiet different from the one produce by men. Both maps are then merged together to form the community map. In the case of the indigenous peoples, men are often less dominant than women. Even if men are generally participating in activities, our approach, which is based on our knowledge of these community dynamics, always provides space for discussion and debate between men and women before the community decision is taken. And in Bantu communities were men are much more dominant, we generally present the participation of women as a good practice in a process like mapping, and communities themselves decide how they will ensure women’s participation, with our support. In most cases, this approach has been very successful, ensuring that women participate actively in project design, strategy and implementation, and that their land and resource use is presented accurately in community maps.