Journal of APPLIED RESEARCH IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Progressive thought and action for practitioners, researchers, civic leaders,
and other citizens contributing to the regional economic development process
PLACING GEOGRAPHIC POWER IN THE HANDS OF THE PEOPLE:
THE POTENTIAL FOR PARTICIPATORY GIS IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography & Geology, The University of Southern Mississippi
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Executive Summary
Geographic information systems (GIS) and other geospatial technologies play a key role in contemporary global society, but remain for the most part tools of specialists. Various alternative approaches, often referred to as participatory GIS (PGIS), have emerged in recent years whose goal is in part to make GIS more accessible to marginalized communities, thereby empowering them to address problems that affect their daily lives. This article presents a review of the origins, debates, and development of PGIS. and its potential for use in economic development. A sidebar describes a participatory research mapping (PRM) project that I coordinated in the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve of eastern Honduras. I conclude with a discussion of the potential of PGIS to contribute to economic development by making geospatial technologies more accessible to marginalized groups and more useful as tools for social change. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Map by Jose Angulo Mena, Honduras
Geographic information systems (GIS) and other geospatial technologies play a key role in the global economy and are prominent in academia, government, and industry (Dobson 1993, 2004; Goodchild 2000). The growing availability of GIS software and burgeoning numbers of geographic information professionals suggest the industry is healthy, but geospatial technologies remain in the hands of a small user group. GIS software has become more user-friendly since 1990, but flagship programs remain so complex they still require considerable time to master. Most programs are also too costly for individuals and small organizations lacking the institutional leverage of universities, government agencies, and big business. Despite the growing popularity of Google Earth and other low-cost or free applications, there is still a clear divide between the GIS haves and have-nots.
One of the greatest barriers to growth in GIS has been the tension between specialists and nonspecialists. GIS integrates data, technology, and human resources (Poore and Chrisman 2006; Wright, Goodchild, and Proctor 1997). Typically, its human component consists of small groups of specialists designing solutions for large groups of nonspecialists. Given their technological skills, GIS specialists are assumed to be qualified to address the geospatial needs of nonspecialist users. This assumption, however, undervalues the abilities of nonspecialists and overvalues those of specialists. Various alternative approaches, often referred to as participatory GIS (PGIS), but known by other names as well, have emerged in recent years to correct this imbalance by involving nonspecialists in everything from data collection, analysis, and results interpretation to software design and database management (Herlihy and Knapp 2003; McCall 2003; Sieber 2006). GIS specialists still have an important role to play in these new approaches, but more as collaborators than as sole voices of authority. Geographers and planners have been at the forefront of PGIS, but other fields, along with community development and advocacy groups are now adopting it as well as a way to integrate geospatial technologies into their work.
Geographic Information Systems: Their Organization and Evolution
Geographic information systems (GIS) have been characterized as a tool, a science, and a combination of both (Dobson 2004; Pickles 1997; Wright, Goodchild, and Proctor 1997). Simply put, GIS combines spatial and nonspatial data into a framework of computer hardware and software in order to explain geographical phenomena. GIS, global positioning systems (GPS), and remote sensing platforms are collectively referred to as geospatial technologies. When GIS emerged in the 1960s, it consisted solely of expert systems designed by small groups of specialists (Poore and Chrisman 2006; Lo and Yueng 2002). By the 1990s, however, growth and diversification of the GIS industry had resulted in a shift away from such expert systems as graphical user interfaces (GUIs) became the norm and advances in software engineering, computer cartography, and visualization made geospatial technologies more intuitive (Mark, et al 1997; Turk 1993).
Technological change has coincided with growing interest in the human dimensions of GIS and the composition of its user community. Lo and Yueng (2002) identified three types of users – viewers, general users, and specialists – who vary in terms of their capabilities, frequency of use, and technological investments. The least skilled viewers make up most of the user community, and their preferences influence how specialists design new technologies. Information plays a critical role in the relationship between nonspecialists and specialists. Most viewers and general users have little use for raw data, but greatly demand knowledge management tools (Poore and Chrisman 2006). This trend has had an enormous impact on the industry over the last decade, as can be seen in the rise of spatial decision support systems (SDSS) and web-based GIS (Aggett and McColl 2006; Bojórquez-Tapia, Diaz-Mondragón, and Ezcurra 2001; Carver, et al. 2001).
Geospatial technologies place an inordinate amount of attention on quantitative data at the expense of qualitative information. They are also prone to obscure technical processes that go into the generation and representation of spatial data ("garbage in, garbage out"), leading to misinterpretations about their accuracy and validity (Pickles 1995). Geospatial technologies play a central role in surveillance, warfare, and invasion of privacy by government and business, which calls into question their scientific neutrality and objectivity (Curry 1995, 1998). Scientific researchers and policy makers have an ethical responsibility to ensure that geospatial technologies are developed and applied in ways that make them accessible to all communities, particularly socially disadvantaged groups, and that promote justice and progressive change in society (Chrisman 1987, 2005; Harris and Weiner 1998; Schuurman 2000).
Participatory GIS and Related Approaches Participatory GIS and related approaches are outgrowths of participatory research and have become widespread as research strategies in the developing and developed world since about 1990 (Chambers 1994; Herlihy and Knapp 2003; Poole 1995). Both see cartography, or mapmaking, as a social activity that can be used to directly involve ordinary people in applied research and problem solving. Participatory mapping initiatives have generally focused more on manual cartography than PGIS, but in recent years the distinction between the two has blurred with the spread of geospatial technologies. Workshops play an important role by providing a setting where participants can work together to identify research goals, design data collection techniques, validate map information, and interpret results. In keeping with participatory ideals, both approaches emphasize the importance of linking with the wider community through meetings and other outreach activities, and by making the results accessible to all stakeholders. Many participatory mapping/PGIS projects in the developing world have been large-scale, lengthy affairs in which multiple communities have collaborated with research teams, government agencies, NGOs, and advocacy groups (Herlihy and Knapp 2003). Some recent studies, however, demonstrat that these approaches can also be implemented at smaller scales (Cochran 2005; Cochran, Reese, and Liu 2009; Robbins 2003; Smith 2003). Participatory mapping/PGIS research in the developing world has focused on a wide range of issues, including land legalization and land-use/land-cover analysis (Bojórquez-Tapia, Díaz-Mondragon, and Ezcurra 2001; Brady 2009; Gordon, Gurdián, and Hale 2003; Haan, et al. 2000; Herlihy, et al. 2008; Mapedza, Wright, and Fawcett 2003; Robiglio and Mala 2005; Sedogo and Groten 2003; TMCC and TAA 1997), conservation management (Cochran 2005; Herlihy 2001, 2003; Nietschmann 1997; Stocks 2003), and disaster mitigation (Cochran, Reese, and Liu 2009). |
Sidebar: A PGIS project in the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve The Mosquitia is an isolated region of the Caribbean coast of Central America. Much of its coastline is composed of lagoons, estuaries, and mangroves fronted by miles of sparsely settled beach. Old growth forests still cover much of the rugged western Mosquitia. Along major rivers of the region, however, particularly near settlements, these forests have been transformed by human activity into mosaics of old growth stands, secondary vegetation, agroforestry plots, and newly cleared land. The Río Patuca is the largest river system in the Honduran Mosquitia. This project studied the town of Wampusirpi, and two smaller communities, Raya and Bodega, all located within this system. In 2001, Wampusirpi had a population of 1,297; Raya, located one kilometer upstream from Wampusirpi, had 156 residents; and Bodega, two kilometers above Raya, had 173 residents in 2001. The Miskito form the largest ethnic group in the Mosquitia and the majority population on the middle Río Patuca: a post-colonial group of mixed indigenous, African, and European ancestry. Hispanic Ladinos form the second largest ethnic group in the region. Around Wampusirpi, Miskito-Ladino relations have been mostly peaceful, but the presence of colonists, along with greater access to the outside world, is now placing pressure on indigenous residents to conform to national Honduran society. Established in 1980, the Río Plátano Biosphere is the oldest UNESCO-affiliated reserve in Central America. It encompasses an area of 8,150 square kilometers, or about seven percent of the national territory of Honduras. It protects large areas of rainforest, pine savanna, and mangroves, and is home to over 40,000 indigenous Garífuna, Miskito, and Pech, as well as Ladinos. Until the 1990s, Río Plátano existed largely as a paper park with no functioning management system. This began to change in 1997 when the Honduran Forestry Agency (AFE-COHDEFOR), with support from the German government, initiated the Río Plátano Biosphere Project, a six-year, 12 million US dollar effort to develop a management plan for the reserve. What followed was a participatory17-month PRM project, in which local surveyors worked with biosphere residents, project staff, development consultants, and personnel from government agencies and NGOs to design a management plan for the reserve. As part of this project, the buffer and cultural zones were divided into managed-use subzones that correspond to contemporary land use. Land-use regulations for each subzone were formulated in collaboration with biosphere residents and became the basis for the management plan that was approved by the Honduran government in 2000. The management plan of the reserve identifies a multiple-use subzone that contains areas where residents historically have practiced shifting cultivation, forest resource extraction, hunting, fishing, ranching, and other subsistence and cash activities. This case study is based on a PRM project that I coordinated in Wampusirpi, Raya, and Bodega between December 2000 and September 2001. I began by establishing a dialogue with leaders of the three communities and working with them to hold public meetings in which residents selected five of their peers to work with me as surveyors on the PRM team. After these elections, I worked with the surveyors from February to September in a series of workshops (talleres) and research activities in which we administered surveys to collect demographic, socioeconomic, and agricultural data from the 227 households in the study area. In conjunction with the agricultural survey, we made a 1:25,000 scale map that showed land use along a 10-kilometer stretch of the Río Patuca floodplain. While administering this survey, the PRM team drew sketch maps of land-use holdings of each household. From August to September we conducted field surveys to collect GPS points for 331 land-use holdings for 105 households. We used these coordinates to plot each holding onto official maps of the Honduran National Geographic Institute (IGN). For additional holdings without coordinates, we relied on the knowledge of each surveyor to locate them in relation to nearby GPS-verified land parcels. The final stage of production involved developing a coding system that linked each holding to the appropriate household for analysis. In keeping with the principles of PRM methodology, I presented the map at public meetings in each of the three communities and talked with residents about our preliminary results. I left copies of the map, along with a Spanish-language report with local leaders and the members of the PRM research team. The findings of the study indicated that the study-area communities will likely experience dramatic population growth over the next several decades. Indeed, the crude rate of natural increase, which is calculated from births and deaths, points to annual growth of 3.9 percent per year along the middle Río Patuca, which would result in a doubling of the population in 17.5 years. Migration patterns, however, complicate this otherwise clear-cut scenario of demographic growth. We documented 65 outmigrants and only 31 inmigrants during this research, or a net loss of 2.1 percent of the total population due to migration. Much of this exodus was the clear result of Hurricane Mitch, which hit northern Central America in November 1998 and resulted in extensive flooding along the Río Patuca and other rivers throughout Honduras. Floodplain agriculture on the Patuca was badly hit, and in the years after Mitch, sizable numbers of residents, many of whom were farmers, left the study area to seek jobs elsewhere. With regard to the region's economy, we found that shifting cultivation, forest collection, hunting, fishing, and other subsistence activities remain important elements of life on the middle Patuca and elsewhere in the Plátano Biosphere. Reciprocal exchange of food, resources, and labor form strong social and economic bonds that link households and communities together across the Mosquitia. Cash earning through participation in a variety of market and professional occupations, however, is also important and growing at the expense of non-cash subsistence. Residents have many stories to tell of their experiences as itinerant workers in enterprises across the Mosquitia, elsewhere in Honduras, and in more distant locales around the Caribbean. In light of the economic change now occurring, however, residents of the middle Río Patuca or other areas of the biosphere no longer have to go far to find cash; the global economy has found them. Foreign products are pervasive and even poor households own manufactured goods. The growing presence of the global society in the form of industrial goods, mass media, and popular culture is rapidly transforming the manner in which local households regard cash. Those specializing solely in non-cash subsistence are becoming increasingly marginalized compared to households that engage in part or entirely in cash activities. Local residents now depend on cash as the critical medium of exchange in their daily lives and it is cash that is the principal factor in the spectrum between rich and poor. Our research found that cattle owning households were expanding dramatically in the area, with significant implications for the Biosphere Reserve. If cattle ownership contines to expand at the expense of shifting cultivation, large areas of forest might be converted to pasture, jeopardizing agroforestry holdings, as well as secondary and old growth stands, that still dominate the floodplain lands of Wampusirpi, Raya, and Bodega. If such a scenario becomes reality, biosphere managers might find it increasingly difficult to balance their goals for rainforest conservation while also promoting sustainable economic development for resident communities in the reserve. Conclusions from this study include that conservation and ED must often proceed hand in hand in the tropical rainforest frontiers of Central America and elsewhere in the developing world. One of the greatest challenges now facing conservation is how to protect biologically rich areas while ensuring that local communities are able to participate in economic development. Such strategies require up-to-date, microscale data that is simply not available for most rural areas of the developing world. The Río Plátano study demonstrated that PGIS methods offer a powerful way to obtain such local information and to produce results that are directly applicable to conservation and development. The residents of the middle Patuca and elsewhere in the Plátano Biosphere are not static populations, but exhibit a great deal of socioeconomic complexity and resourcefulness in their dealings with the outside world. An understanding of such nuances is critical to the success of any development project that seeks to balance aspirations of local people to improve their quality of life without losing sight of long-term goals of protecting the environment. |
In recent years, PGIS research has begun to address concerns raised by the GIS and Society debates by redesigning GIS to better fit the participatory approach. One area of focus has been on how to transform the human component of GIS to more effectively incorporate ordinary people and their knowledge in PGIS research (Dennis 2006; Elwood 2006a, 2006b; Elwood and Leitner 1998; Ghose and Huxhold 2001; Kyem 2001, 2004; Matthews, Detwiler, and Burton 2005; Sheppard 2005; Talen 2000; Wood 2005).
Many of these studies show how challenging this can be. In her account of a PGIS initiative in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, Elwood (2006b) describes how the ethnicity, class, and political background of participants influenced to a great extent what they contributed and what they got out of the project. A similar study by Ghose and Huxhold (2001) illustrates how the social and geographical setting of Milwaukee during the 1990s influenced how different stakeholder groups interacted with each other in a series of PPGIS projects. Matthews, Detwiler, and Burton (2005) and Dennis (2006) combine qualitative research with standard GIS analysis to document urban landscape perceptions of low-income residents in various U.S. cities. Finally, Talen (2000) describes a bottom-up GIS project in which community groups in inner-city Dallas used geospatial technologies to contribute to a municipal study on urban zoning and public services by mapping their urban environments.
Collaborations between researchers, communities groups, government entities, and advocacy organizations require a great deal of management expertise and pragmatism for success (Kyem 2001, 2004). Given the nature of the participatory approach, data collection and analysis are only part of a potentially complicated process that might last for months or even years. Success in PGIS research is measured not only by the information it produces, but also by the empowerment it generates and its long-term impacts in a community. As a result, a growing number of researchers are developing tools to evaluate participatory elements of PGIS (Aggett and McColl 2006; Barndt 1998; Chambers 2006; Corbett and Keller 2005; McCall 2003, 2004). McCall (2003) provides a framework to define and measure accountability, accessibility, participation, equity, and empowerment in PGIS initiatives. Aggett and McColl (2006) describe a decision support matrix developed as part of a PGIS initiative that addressed economic growth in a rural community in Washington. Other researchers have dealt with the issue of how to assess empowerment. Other researchers have focused on how to assess empowerment. Do ordinary participants in a PGIS initiative have to become GIS specialists themselves to be empowered or is it enough for them to become leaders in research and outreach activities? Corbett and Keller (2005) provide a framework to analyze such issues both for individual and community participants. Because every PGIS project faces a unique set of constraints and opportunities, no single measure of empowerment is possible or even desirable. These case studies, however, provide a lot of useful insight into how ED professionals should approach this issue in ways that ensure the long-term success of PGIS initiatives.
Arguably the most promising area of PGIS research focuses on how to redesign geospatial technologies. A growing number of researchers are exploring how GIS could be made more accessible to mainstream society through object-oriented programming, multimedia technologies, and web applications (Carver, et al. 2001; Corbett and Keller 2004; Esnard, Gelobter, and Morales 2001; Geertman 2002; Haklay and Tobón 2003; Jankowski and Nyerges 2001; Peng 2001; Sarjakoski 1998; Schiffer 1998; Smith 2002; Tang and Waters 2005; Wong and Chua 2001). Haklay and Tobón (2003) provide a good overview of these issues and survey various methods to evaluate the usability of PPGIS applications. Schuurman (2005, 2006) and Sieber (2004) examine how GIS can be made more participatory through changes in computer programming and data formatting standards. A great deal of research focuses on how web applications can be used to decentralize GIS and make it more accessible to the general public. Carver, et al. (2001), for example, provides several case studies of how web-based GIS was used as a tool to increase public participation in urban planning initiatives in the United Kingdom. Wong and Chua (2001) describe a similar scenario in Philadelphia, PA, but demonstrate that the internet is no substitute for face-to-face interactions in planning, especially when working with disadvantaged communities. Many of these studies are essentially progress reports that examine specific GIS applications or techniques and describe how they have been evaluated by nonspecialist users within the context of participatory projects. They provide a wealth of ideas to anyone in the ED profession interested in seeing GIS become more user-friendly. This area of research is especially promising because it demonstrates that there is a great deal of common ground in which PGIS researchers and geospatial industry professionals can work together to develop a truly nonspecialist and participatory GIS/2 in the foreseeable future.
Conclusions: Participatory GIS and Economic Development
Geospatial technologies play a critical role in the contemporary global economy, but are still used mostly by specialists because their cost and complexity make them inaccessible to most people. PGIS and related approaches are potential solutions to this problem and may contribute to the development of next-generation GIS technologies that are more accessible to ordinary people. Based on the literature reviewed in this article, PGIS has a great deal of promise for application in economic development. It provides a way to integrate sophisticated GIS technologies in ED initiatives and to get ordinary people involved in solving problems that affect their communities. Through its emphasis on education and empowerment, PGIS can also help build a sense of camaraderie and grassroots identity that is necessary for any sustained effort to bring progressive change to disadvantaged communities. PGIS and related approaches, however, should not be regarded as panaceas.
ED professionals interested in integrating them in their work must determine how to balance their own goals with the long-term empowerment of stakeholders. For applied development research, this means assessing what is possible given human, technical, and financial resources of a project, along with the social and political contexts of the community in which it is being implemented. One possible first step is to incorporate the human component of PGIS into an ED initiative. By directly involving local residents in map-based research and hand-mapping exercises, they have an opportunity to contribute to community initiatives and empower themselves to get more involved in similar initiatives in the future. If strong support exists for PGIS or if GIS specialists are available, a more technological approach might be possible in which local residents and researchers collaborate on activities such as digital mapping, data collection, and developing custom software solutions. Ultimately, there is no set formula for how to incorporate PGIS in applied ED research, but if the outcome contributes to sustained community development and empowerment, the rewards for doing so certainly outweigh the costs.
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The author
David M. Cochran, Jr. is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Southern Mississippi in the Department of Geography and Geology. He teaches courses in human and environmental geography and uses participatory methods to conduct research on natural resources, conservation, and coastal hazards in Central America and the United States.
Telephone: 601 266 6014
email: David.Cochran@usm.edu
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