Resumen de Participatory Mapping with Indigenous Communities for Conservation: Challenges and Lessons from Suriname

Sara O.I. Ramirez-Gomez, Gregory G Brown, Annette Tjon Sie Fat

• The indigenous peoples of Southern Suriname depend on landscape services provided by intact, functioning ecosystems, but their use and reliance on natural landscapes is not well understood. In 2011, Conservation International Suriname (CIS) engaged in a participatory GIS (PGIS) mapping project to identify ecosystem services with the Trio and Wayana indigenous peoples living in five villages in Southern Suriname. The PGIS project involved a highly remote and inaccessible region, multiple indigenous peoples, villages with different perceptions and experiences with outsiders, and a multitude of regional development pressures. We describe the PGIS project from inception to mapping to communication of the results to the participants with a particular focus on the challenges and lessons learned from PGIS project implementation. Key challenges included decoupling the PGIS process from explicit CIS conservation objectives, engaging reluctant villages in the project, and managing participant expectations about project outcomes. Lessons learned from the challenges included the need to first build trust through effective communication, selecting initial project locations with the greatest likelihood of success, and to manage expectations by disclosing project limitations with the indigenous communities and external parties.