Cover photo: Ogiek women using CoMapeo in the bamboo forests of Mt Elgon, Kenya, during biodiversity monitoring training. Photo by María Alvarez Malvido.
“We call it sound, but it’s actually a language. Sound speaks of where you are and tells you about time. If you don’t have a watch but you listen to bats in a certain way, you can know it's time to take the livestock out,” explains Cosmas Murunga, Chairman of Chepkitale Ogiek Governing Council. He is one of the Elders guiding the community mapping and monitoring strategies that have been key in their efforts and victories to regain rights to their ancestral territory in Mt Elgon.
It's a rainy evening in Kitale, Kenya, and we are drinking tea with our Ogiek partners Chepkitale Indigenous Peoples Development Projects (CIPDP) at their office, while preparing to make our way on the two hour drive to the community center on Mt Elgon. With the support of Forest People’s Programme, the University of Oxford, Conservation Metrics and Awana Digital, the CIPDP team is about to implement the first phase of a community-based biodiveristy monitoring project using CoMapeo, and there is shared excitement in using one of the new features that resulted from our co-design process with them and other partners: audio recording.
Why is sound relevant for mapping and monitoring?
As the CIPDP team explains, listening practices are central to their Ogiek ancestral knowledge. Sounds speak of the land: its rhythms, its health, and the biodiversity that lives within.
“Sound from wildlife can also send you an alarm or tell you about danger, about migration, or about the state of life of different animals,” adds Fred Kibelio, Ogiek Elder and Project Coordinator at CIPDP, with examples about surrounding birds, bats, and monkeys that may not always be seen, but are definitely heard by the Ogiek.
Mt. Elgon is one of the last refuges for forest-dwelling elephants in East Africa. The Ogiek have co-existed harmoniously with the elephants for centuries, and have strong community bylaws that support their sustainable relationship with the forest and its ecosystem. By documenting this relationship and tracking the numerous plants and animals residing in the ecosystem they steward, the Ogiek’s objectives with biodiversity monitoring are to both support their internal community-based territorial management, and prove its efficacy in order to secure their land rights.
“For internal use, biodiversity monitoring helps the community make decisions on how we're utilizing the limited or scarce resources, and make a spatial plan on how we are going to live in the land. The external use is to ensure that we amplify the voice of people on how they're taking care of their territory and develop an evidence-based tool that can be used by scientists and academia to showcase Indigenous-led methods to conserve and protect our territories.”, explains Phoebe Ndiema, Project Coordinator focused on mapping and gender work at CIDPD.
CoMapeo: gathering audible data, and evidence.
The new features in CoMapeo play a key role in making the new monitoring program possible.
“To me, the part that is exciting about CoMapeo is the addition of functions like recording. We normally have shy animals, so you can’t just see them. This will be an opportunity for us to show that they exist,” explains Collins Ndiema, Field Officer at CIPDP.
Through the biodiversity monitoring process, CIPDP plans to have data for the community to use and take action to protect their lands. Using CoMapeo’s audio recording feature, this qualitative and quantitative data will not only involve visual evidence, but will also be audible.
CoMapeo’s new audio recording feature is the result of years of feedback from partners across the world, rooted in their mapping and Earth defense experiences with needs and desires such as: recording audio testimonies, having options for mappers and monitors to oral descriptions instead of typed texts, community members being able to listen to the testimonies and stories of others who have made recordings, place-based storytelling, documenting endangered language in offline contexts, and biodiversity monitoring like this project from CIPDP.
Now that CoMapeo is out on the land, we are excited to learn how this feature is being explored by partners, and users across diverse cultural contexts and ecosystems.
---------------------------------------------------
We are excited to share more details about the new features and next iterations of CoMapeo over the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned!
Email us at help@comapeo.app / ayuda@comapeo.app
You can also find us on Discord
You can download and read more about CoMapeo on comapeo.app