Integrating participatory GIS into spatial planning regulation: The case of Merauke District, Papua, Indonesia

In many cases, government institutions lack to consider community areas as a part of their traditional land use in spatial planning policy. The results of numerous investigations into participatory mapping have been insufficiently adopted by Spatial Planning Regulation (SPR). In Indonesia, Spatial Planning Regulation (Rencana Tata Ruang Wilayah / RTRW) is an instrument to guide sectors related to land uses both development and protection. Using a case study for the Merauke district of Papua province in Indonesia, we demonstrate how participatory mapping results can be integrated into SPR. To our knowledge, this is the first successful attempt to integrate important community areas into the regulation of district spatial planning. Participatory GIS (PGIS) was used to map important community areas. There are three phases to the process of combining PGIS with Spatial Planning Regulation. The first phase was to develop a shared vision between the communities and district government and commitment from both parties to accept the final mapping results for use in the further planning process. The second was to facilitate the community to conduct the participatory GIS process and the final phase was to integrate the important community areas into the spatial planning regulation at a scale of 1:50.000 by the RTRW of Merauke district. The total area adopted by the RTRW was about 69% of cultural preservation areas under protected areas. The rest of the important community areas merged into land use allocations within both categories of protected areas (22%) and development areas (9%). In this case, 91% of the community areas were secured from other land use purposes for agriculture, mining, forestry and infrastructure. The PGIS approach can be applied to other districts across Indonesia for mapping the community land use practices in Spatial Planning Regulation