Field methodologies and community mapping systems for environmental cooperation in Africa

Conservation actions related to sustainable development in Africa need a deep reflection on the role of territorial organization of local societies with the aim, on the one hand, to recover the dynamics of traditional legitimacy, and on the other, to present operational instruments that cooperation institutions can use for realizing a real territorial legalization of local communities organization. The paper focuses on the SIGAP Strategy (Geographic Information Systems for Protected Areas), a research methodology created by the team of geographers of the University of Bergamo within the Diathesis Cartographic Lab and it has already been applied in environmental conservation projects in some sub-Saharan African countries. This methodology supports the realization of participatory management plans for protected areas peripheries, following three objectives: a) to recover the territorial organization and territorial values of local people as a platform for managing a protected area buffer zone; b) to communicate these values by the use of a multi-scale participatory cartography to be used in negotiation tables; c) to build instruments of capitalization and decision support systems. The SIGAP Strategy offers an answer to the difficulty of identifying methods and instruments able to translate the principles of sustainability and participation, by using GIS systems and technologies (Geographic Information Systems) respecting the social-territorial organization of local communities and the objectives of International organizations (UNESCO, IUCN, UE). It assumes the knowledge of local territorial organization as an element for giving instructions for co-management and for identifying the different involved actors. This strategy has been tested in Western Africa within two protected areas of the WAP Complex: the W Transboundary Biosphere Reserve (WTBR, Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, 2001-2005) and the Arly Unity of Protection and Conservation (UPC-Arly, Burkina Faso, 2006-2009). In the first case, the research has been developed within the Programme Régional Parc W/ECOPAS-UE, whose objective was the definition of the park buffer zone and transition area following the UNESCO’s MAB program. In this context, the group of the University of Bergamo has created a project of university cooperation with the geographers of the universities of Ougadougou, Niamey, Cotonou. In the second case, the research has been realized within an interuniversity cooperation program with the 2iE (Institut International de l´Eau et de l´Environnement) of Ouagadougou aimed at an analysis for the study o the socio-territorial organization and landscape values of the peripheries of the Arly Unity of Protection and Conservation. Through the analysis of a case study, we will show the functioning of this methodology in its different modular phases that create specific operational instruments identifying in participatory mapping an important instrument for environmental planning: i. field research, for a territorial diagnostic; ii. data modeling for producing their cartographic representation; iii. strategies for creating participation, by respecting local communities logics and different actors; iv. capitalization and promotion of the results obtained during the research.