Project Background

The international conference on Mapping for Change in 2005 was a landmark event where 154 practitioners from 45 countries convened to discuss state of the art participatory spatial information management and communication and its potential, constraints, opportunities and threats. At the conference and in subsequent on-line surveys, practitioners, activists and researchers identified the following constraints related to the spread of participatory geographical information systems (PGIS):

  • the lack of reference materials for training potential stakeholders interested in participatory mapping;
  • the spread of malpractice in participatory mapping, resulting in the abuse and misuse of local knowledge.

In response to these constraints, the EU-ACP Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) conceived this Training Kit in partnership with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The project was launched during the first quarter of 2008. A number of development partners * contributed to the outlining of the Training Kit during a Curriculum Development Workshop which took place in Wageningen, The Netherlands in April 2008.

The English and Spanish versions of the Training Kit were produced over a period of two and a half years (2008-2010) with the contributions of more than 40 international specialists representing civil society and academic and development agencies from across the globe.

List of organisations 

  • Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC), South Africa
  • Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) University of Twente, The Netherlands
  • University of British Columbia, Okanagan (UBC), Canada
  • Borneo Resource Institute (BRIMAS), Malaysia
  • Care International, Nicaragua
  • Centre pour l’Environnement et le Développement (CED), Cameroun
  • Creative Commons (CC), Netherlands
  • CyberTracker Conservation, South Africa
  • East- West Centre, USA
  • Environmental Research Mapping and Information Systems in Africa (ERMIS Africa), Kenya
  • Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Ford Foundation, Brazil
  • Gaia Foundation, UK
  • Green Forum Western Visayas, Philippines
  • Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK
  • Instituto del Bien Comun (IBC), Perú
  • International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD), The Netherlands
  • International Institute on Environment and Development (IIED), UK
  • International Land Coalition (ILC ), Italy
  • Local Earth Observation (LEO), The Netherlands
  • Native Lands, USA
  • Partners of Community Organizations (PACOS TRUST), Malaysia
  • Philippine Association for Intercultural Development (PAFID), Philippines
  • Rainforest Foundation (RFF) UK
  • SHALIN Suomi, Finland
  • UNOSAT, Switzerland
  • WWF, Colombia