Promoting environmental justice through integrated mapping approaches: The map of water conflicts in Andalusia (Spain)

Abstract

Addressing environmental governance conflicts requires the adoption of a complexity approach to carry out an adaptive process of collective learning, exploration, and experimentation. In this article, we hypothesize that by integrating community-based participatory mapping processes with internet-based collaborative digital mapping technologies, it is possible to create tools and spaces for knowledge co-production and collective learning. We also argue that providing a collaborative web platform enables these projects to become a repository of activist knowledge and practices that are often poorly stored and barely shared across communities and organizations. The collaborative Webmap of Water Conflicts in Andalusia, Spain, is used to show the benefits and potential of mapping processes of this type. The article sets out the steps and methods used to develop this experience: (i) background check; (ii) team discussion and draft proposal; (iii) in-depth interviews, and (iv) integrated participative and collaborative mapping approach. The main challenge that had to be addressed during this process was to co-create a tool able to combine the two perspectives that construct the identity of integrated mapping: a data-information-knowledge co-production process that is useful for the social agents-the environmental activists-while also sufficiently categorizable and precise to enable the competent administrations to steer their water management.