Participatory mapping and problem ranking methodology in the research of sustainable communities-workshop with indigenous people under community-based forest management program in the Philippines

Abstract

This chapter aims to discuss a methodology for envisioning the sustainable development strategies that can be adopted by indigenous communities, through the use of Participatory Mapping and Problem Ranking. Such methods can facilitate the discovery of the local context in sustainability research, based on a review of the present situation in a given community, and an analysis of their recent past. Essentially, the local conditions inherent to a community need to be systematically analyzed to achieve a higher level of participatory development. The main purpose of this study is to explain how to implement these two methods. To showcase such methodologies the chapter will use the example of community forestry contracts concluded with indigenous groups in the Philippines, and review whether the Community-Based Forest Management policy implemented really helped achieve better sustainable development in the local context. The results of this Participatory Mapping and Problem Ranking exercise revealed that the community forestry program was not well suited to local conditions in which there was lack of sufficient understanding of the land ownership and local problems upon the Community-Based Forest Management project’s implementations, and thus a revision of the policy and implementation guidelines is needed so that its primary goal of promoting sustainable development could be achieved.