Building Community Consensus Through Participatory Land Mapping
Abt Global recently completed the Millennium Challenge Account Indonesia (MCA-Indonesia)-funded Participatory Mapping and Planning 6 (PMaP 6) Project, a program established under the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Compact with Indonesia to generate accurate and inclusive maps in selected districts in Indonesia. PMaP projects support investments in Indonesia by combining an intensive local participatory approach, existing government regulations, and modern geospatial technologies to resolve land uncertainty that can hinder those investments, public funding, and reliable public services. The process has been applied in over 150 villages in eight districts in the Nusa Tenggara Barat and Sumatera Barat provinces by Abt, as well as in other locations by fellow MCA-Indonesia funded programs, with local governments considering continuing the effort on their own in future.
Abt worked at the district, sub-district, and village levels to guide stakeholders through a 21-step participatory mapping methodology called Village Boundary Setting/Resource Mapping (VBS/RM). This effort helped communities identify their village boundaries, settle any neighboring border disputes, and map natural and cultural land-based resources. The resulting consensus allowed the Abt teams to map the agreed-upon village boundaries and present these maps in both physical and digital form to villagers and local government leaders, who then reviewed and approved them as the basis for construction of physical boundary pillars, which enabled legalization of boundaries to support future development and investments, as well as mitigate any disputes.
Learn more about Abt’s work on the PMaP project:
