Conference Flow

The conference is scheduled for 3 days. On day 4 participants will be offered the opportunity to do a field visit to a site where PGIS has been practiced.

The first day will set the stage by summarising the known status, opportunities and challenges of PGIS practice in Developing Countries and First Nations. Follow-up discussions will focus on describing enabling or disabling conditions for adoption and implementation of PGIS, and on identifying necessary preconditions. Based on identified constraints, participants will identify mechanisms and recommend actions for establishing the enabling environment; identifying target audiences and awareness raising mechanisms.

The focus of the second day will be on setting the stepping stones for developing guidelines for sound PGIS practice. While focusing on methodological issues, presenters will share lessons learned in practicing PGIS in developing countries in the context of broader participatory spatial planning initiatives and interventions where spatial information management has reinforced participatory approaches and processes.  Plenary presentations and discussions will alternate with thematic break out groups where case study presentations will serve as starters for work-group sessions. Details are provided in the Conference Programme.

Case studies will feature experiences gained from different regions (Africa, Pacific, Caribbean, Americas, South & Southeast Asia, First Nations, etc.) and in different spatial, environmental as well as institutional and political contexts. The presentations and follow-up working group discussions will touch on methodological issues dealing with methods for representing local knowledge, ethics of practice (e.g. control and use of ISK, intellectual property rights, data privacy, access, and exclusion, etc.), supporting cultural heritage preservation and identity building among indigenous peoples and rural communities, and “participatory numbers” (i.e. issues of scale, precision and accuracy) required for successful PGIS practice.

The third day will focus on implementation issues in the following four broad contexts (i) Land and Resource Rights & Entitlement, (ii) Participatory Land Use Planning (PLUP) and Collaborative Natural Resource Management, (iii) Conflict Management and Amelioration and (iv) Integration of Participatory GIS with GIS Institutions. The outputs of the break-out groups will serve as inputs for defining good practices in different contexts.

Day 3 will also set the foundations for follow-up actions on both national and regional scales in terms of networking, capacity building, improvement of good practice and supporting wider adoption of sound PGIS practice in developing countries.