Electronic Appendix

Advocating Ethnic Minorities with Maps on Ancestral Territories

Albrecht Ehrensperger, NCCR North-South, CDE, University of Bern

The Ogiek Peoples Ancestral Territories (OPAT) project was started after a request from elders of the Ogiek ethnic minority in western Kenya to create maps of their ancestral lands to help securing territorial rights and interests against contemporary forces of tenure dispossession and cultural erosion. An intensive process of community based mapping was conducted on the basis of enlarged aerial photographs, and an Atlas showing the ancestral territories of 20 Ogiek clans was created. This Atlas will be officially launched in March 2009. Even though the project is still ongoing, it can be stated that safeguarding of valuable traditional knowledge was already achieved through this project, which has therewith contributed to empowering the Ogiek ethnic minority.

The OPAT project seeks to safeguard traditional tacit knowledge of the Ogiek, a semi-literate hunter-gatherer community in Western Kenya, and to make this knowledge explicit and therefore instrumental for advocating this community’s territorial rights in ongoing court cases opposing it to the Kenyan government and to immigrant farmers from other ethnic groups. So far, the project has focused on the Ogiek community living in the Eastern Mau protected forest. This community is facing threats of eviction by the government and increasing competition for land and other resources due to immigration from other parts of the country.

With means of modern information and communication technology, the project is seeking, on the one hand, to empower the Ogiek community and, on the other hand, to avail to the conflicting parties of the ongoing court cases a basis for further discussion and deliberation in view of reaching a better informed consensus or decision-making. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) together with aerial photography and GPS technology are the technical backbone of the project. Community members were asked to draw territorial boundaries on aerial photographs, to verify positions in the field with GPS receivers and to mutually agree on common boundaries. The information thus collected was further processed in a GIS and overlaid with other information like a digital elevation model and topographic maps. The resulting 25 maps were then compiled into one Atlas on the ancestral territories of the Ogiek in the Eastern Mau protected forest.

Research Project
The OPAT project was implemented in a collaborative manner. The Ogiek community and its representatives actively participated in the identification and mapping of ancestral territories with the facilitation and technical backstopping from ERMIS Africa, a local NGO, which in turn undertook to digitise the acquired information and to compile it into an atlas with the technical backstopping of CDE. The project was funded through the ESAPP Programme coordinated by CDE and funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

At the same time, the OPAT project was implemented as one of three case studies in a PhD research, which addresses the role - in terms of potentials, limitations and risks - of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related information and communication technologies in the context of sustainable development (Ehrensperger 2006). As such it is a methodological and conceptual contribution to the Swiss NCCR “North-South” programme within the frame of which it was elaborated.

Sweeping statements often characterise the debate on GIS for sustainable development. In contrast this thesis proposes a differentiated analysis according to implementation context and logical stages of knowledge creation, diffusion and utilisation processes. It seeks to provide tangible recommendations for initiatives relying on information and communication technology within participatory approaches to sustainable development.

Participatory mapping exercise in Nessuit location in the Eastern Mau Protected Forest area. Ogiek community members are guided through the process by Ogiek facilitators working with the NGO ERMIS Africa (Photo A. Ehrensperger)

Results

• At case-study level: The successful completion of the Atlas is a great achievement in itself, as it was preceded by intensive deliberations between members of the Ogiek community to clearly define and agree upon common boundaries. It is the fruit of a skillful mediation process and transparent partnership between the parties involved. The feedback from Ogiek community members is overwhelmingly positive, as they realize that their traditional and implicit knowledge on their territories and cultural heritage can be captured, displayed and made explicit with modern information and communication tools. They also realize that the output contributes to the building of their own identity, both internally and in the frame of their communication with non-Ogiek stakeholders. Finally, they put great hopes in the ability of the Atlas to contribute to a solution in the court cases, which are pending, in some cases, since 1997.

• At research project level: The OPAT case study has shown that geo-information technology can have a wide range of potentials for participatory processes of resources and land tenure assessment at the grassroots level: The technology itself is ideal to support real time mapping processes, which are more easily conceptualized by concerned stakeholders and lead to a better ownership of the process. The high level of accuracy obtained is a guarantee for the reaching of informed consensus and against post-mapping disputes. The mapping itself leads to a good transparency of information and claims, which can only be obtained through lengthy debates if using other approaches. The mapping process also fostered participation of non-literate stakeholders and proved to have a high ability of integrating various epistemologies into the assessment, consensus building and decision-making process.

Detail of participatory mapping exercise. An Ogiek community member is trying to orientate himself on the aerial photograph (Photo A. Ehrensperger).

Dissemination and Use
The OPAT Atlas will be launched in March 2009. Hence dissemination and use have not yet taken place. Land ownership, territorial rights and access to land are strongly politicised issues in Kenya and have high conflict potential. Therefore, an earlier launch, initially scheduled in March 2008, was cancelled due to the post-electoral violence early 2008, during which unsolved land tenure issues contributed to fuel the conflict.

However, the informal feedbacks so far received from Kenyan governmental, NGO and academic institutions concerning the Atlas are all very positive. The OPAT Atlas is viewed as an unprecedented landmark in Kenya, and as a suitable tool for local planning and governance of territorial assets and conflict mitigation and management. There is agreement about the fact, that the atlas can help in decision making among policy makers involved in formulation and implementation of policies for tenure, cultural and natural resources management, and also that it promotes collegial learning among development partners.

Key messages

1. Geo-information technology helps safeguarding traditional knowledge and making it available in negotiation processes including various epistemological backgrounds. Therefore, it can play an integrative role in the context of sustainable development initiatives.
2. Conflicts pertaining to land tenure and to the access to resources can not be dealt with sustainably without a sufficient level of accuracy of the achieved plan or consensus. Sketch maps are therefore not an alternative to geo-information technology for such sensitive matters.
3.  Bridging the digital divide and the information gap affecting marginalised populations in developing countries is of crucial importance to find avenues towards sustainable development that are based on true consensus.

Partner Institutions

Julius Muchemi
ERMIS Africa
Nakuru, Kenya
E-Mail: Julius@ermisafrica.org

ERMIS Africa is a non-profit making local NGO based in Nakuru, Kenya. The organization was founded in 1999 and legally registered in 2004. Its core activity is community mapping and participatory GIS (PGIS). ERMIS Africa has a regional mandate to share knowledge, ideas, experiences, skills and strategies on PGIS and community mapping among development practitioners and local resource dependant communities.

Dr Albrecht Ehrensperger
Centre for Development and Environment
Institute of Geography, University of Bern
E-Mail: Albrecht.ehrensperger@cde.unibe.ch

CDE is a department of the Institute of Geography at the University of Bern, Switzerland. CDE’s mission is to contribute to sustainable development in countries of the North, South, and East, through research partnerships, education and training, development of concepts and tools, raising awareness and policy advice.

1. http://www.ermisafrica.org/
2. http://www.cde.unibe.ch/Regions/Esapp_Rs.asp
3. Ehrensperger, A. 2006: “Potentials, limitations and risks of geo-information technology for sustainable development approaches in Kenya”. PhD Thesis, Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Switzerland