Water Planning Portal Tool News Cutural Mapping Methodology of Collaborative Cultural Mapping
Methodology of Collaborative Cultural Mapping
This manual of collaborative mapping is an excellent resource developed by Amazon Conservation Team (ACT), a Virginia-based group with field offices in Brazil, Suriname, and Colombia. The manual was developed for the use of individuals and institutions that work with traditional communities that have expressed a desire to initiate a cultural mapping process in their territories. At the same time, it seeks to offer readers a basic understanding of the techniques used to create cultural maps, procedures carried out by and with the communities.
ACT Brazil believes that the best path to safeguarding the environment and strengthening culture in native lands can be expressed as three processes: mapping, managing and protecting.
These processes are intrinsically connected because the cultural and land use mapping process supports collective discussions that result in plans and strategies for environmental conservation and territorial protection.
This manual has been designed to encourage comparisons and an exchange of information with other environmental protection methodologies, especially in light of the fact that several other institutions currently work with methodologies similar to that applied by ACT Brazil.
Cultural collaborative mapping contributes to a better local understanding of social and environmental issues: the resident communities are given the opportunity to systematize their knowledge regarding their territory and to increase and perpetuate that knowledge through debates that engage the communities’ leadership, elders, youth, and women according to their social context and community priorities.
When a community is able to systematically articulate and represent its knowledge of its lands, it gains the necessary tools to establish laws, manage productive systems, implement protection methodologies and improve its quality of life.
- Download the Methodology of Collaborative Cultural Mapping (English) from ACT Brazil.
- Ethnographic maps built using cutting-edge technology may help Amazon tribes win forest carbon payments by Rhett A. Butler at www.mongabay.com, November 29, 2009
