Participação

Participation.

A methodology which pops up often in our sector is participatory mapping. Often it’s used to gather community members to map resources within an area, or multiple stakeholders to create a land use plan. As our workshop this week is about conflict between humans and wild animals, the map was done to depict hotspots, issues and severity. This is a step towards designing effective measures to reduce conflict, where these are currently lacking.

It was interesting to see the political dimension of it. The government representatives present were keen to see the conflict exaggerated so they could score political points and get attention on the issue. Those of us more involved in funding and data were more interested in the factual issues. We can only really successfully raise money for projects to tackle issues such as this if we have some reliable evidence. Donors will always ask for references to show a problem exists. An example of the facts versus feelings debate.