Cultivating island futures

Mapping Local Knowledge in Seas of Change

“How can island sustainable development better include sustaining communities, cultures, and ways of life?”

Small island communities in the Pacific are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, and while maps have aided in showing the threat of rising sea levels (Gerhardt, 2023), more work can be done to incorporate indigenous and local knowledge in climate adaptation, planning, and cartographic processes (Sultana, 2022). This important yet underrepresented knowledge is further threatened by climate migration and tourism overdevelopment. Given this context, how can cartographic practice be opened up to include indigenous and local small island communities and incorporate their knowledge, practices, and responses in conversations around sustainable development and climate resilience?

To address this question this transdisciplinary project aims to host creative participatory map-making workshops with the local community in Siargao, the Philippines. This is with the goal of documenting local knowledge on ecology, climate adaptation and resilience. The outcome of these workshops is to co-produce a living atlas of local island knowledge which will be published in print and digitally. The purpose of the atlas is to document local knowledge which can be used to inform policy and climate adaptation decisions, as well as deepen the understanding in academe to learn from bottom-up approaches to sustainability.

This project is a collaboration between scholars from Netherlands-based institutions, Utrecht University, Department of Sustainable Development, and Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, and practitioners from Lokal Lab, a grassroots NGO based in Siargao.

Project Team

  • Cara Flores: PhD Candidate, Department of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, Project Lead
  • Charmae Pyl Wissink-Nercua: Specialist in Urban Land, Housing Governance, & Capacity-Building at the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
  • Elena Marie Enseñado: Specialist in Nature-based Climate Change Adaptation Planning at IHS
  • Nash Cruz, Graphic Designer based in Manila, Philippines

With support from Lokal Lab staff Grant conceptualization supported by Zuleika Bibi Sheik