So far ...

So far ...

In line with is 2007-2010 Strategic Plan, CTA has been spearheading a series of initiatives aimed at sharing lessons learned, identifying gaps and building on institutional and methodological synergies in the field of participatory mapping, also termed Participatory GIS (PGIS).

CTA has supported an Award-winning project in Fiji, and the development of a regional community mapping network in Eastern Africa and has extended its approach to other ACP sub-regions.

The CTA-ITC organized 2005 Mapping for Change Conference represented a landmark event where 154 practitioners from 45 countries convened to discuss the state of the art, potential and constraints, as well as opportunities and threats of participatory spatial information management and communication. Both at the conference and in subsequent on-line surveys, practitioners, activists and researchers identified the lack of training materials as a major constraint in the spread of good practice.

In 2007 CTA entered in partnership with IFAD to develop an training kit on PGIS practice. The product of this project will ensure that PGIS practice evolves and spreads in an ethically conscious manner, ensuring that indigenous and other marginalised communities are effective in documenting, representing, and communicating their spatial knowledge, while taking a high degree of control over the process. Good practice will add value and authority to local knowledge, facilitate inter-generational knowledge exchange, contribute to building and supporting a cohesive community identity, and support sustainable planning through collaborative decision-making.The kit will offer fundamental building blocks from which trainers can design and build their own workshops according to the training needs of the audience/participants/target groups. The kit will be modular and purposely designed to meeting training scenarios having diverse purposes and audiences.

In addition CTA has been supporting the adoption of Participatory 3D Modelling (P3DM) in Kenya and strenghened local partners in adopting and re-deploying the methodology. As a follow-up the partner organisation ERMIS-Africa has supported forest-dependent communities (Ogiek P3DM in 2006, Sengwer P3DM in 2007 and Yiaku P3DM in 2007) to map their Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) including territories, natural resources, cultures and livelihoods.