This global conference" to be co-organized by Tebtebba" PAFID" AMAN (Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago) and Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) will be held on August 25-29 at Samosir" Toba Lake in North Sumatra" Indonesia. The participants will be primarily the representatives of indigenous organizations and local communities from Asia" Africa" Latin America who have been doing community participatory mapping and resource inventory. Other participants will be NGOs and experts on community mapping; and selected representatives from UN agencies/bodies and governments who also have extensive experiences in funding or undertaking participatory mapping.  

We will identify several case studies from Asia (Indonesia" Nepal" Philippines)" Latin America (Brazil" Peru" Nicaragua) and Africa (Kenya)" and among several NGOs and RRI partners that have rich experiences in community mapping. Workshops and plenary sessions will be organized to further enrich the discussions and sharing. A planning session will be organized at the last day to identify ways forward in further enriching/developing and supporting indigenous peoples’ community participatory mapping initiatives and the contributions of this kind of mapping and resource inventory in strengthening the community-based monitoring and information systems.

General Objective

• To convene representatives of Indigenous Peoples' organizations" networks and communities and experts who have extensive knowledge and experiences in community participatory mapping to share their knowledge" experiences and lessons learned in doing this work; 

Specific Objectives

• To share good practices in using maps generated through community participatory means to assert and claim indigenous peoples’ rights to their lands" territories and resources" how these helped in the policy advocacy work to get governments and the dominant societies to recognize and respect these rights and how use these maps are being used to enhance their capacities to mitigate and adapt to climate change" especially disaster risk reduction and rehabilitation.  

• To learn how community participatory mapping is being used to generate baseline data (land use  and land tenure" biopersity/resources" climate change adaptation and mitigation" traditional knowledge " human rights etc)  and how maps are used to  monitor changes. 
• To learn and enhance capacities of community mappers to upgrade their methodologies and technologies that are community-friendly" culturally-appropriate and gender- and indigenous-sensitive; 
• To identify ways forward to strengthen and support indigenous peoples’ community participatory mapping  and role of this in community monitoring and information work.
• To generate more commitments from  partners and mapping experts  to provide their services to indigenous communities and organizations who are willing to use this tool for strengthening their capacities and advocacy work