GIS and land use in texcoco municipality, Mexico:: contrasting local and official understandings

Planning design in a 'top down' and technocratic way has not always been relevant to agricultural development. Decision-making on land use in Mexico is a complex process involving environmental, socio-economic and cultural issues. Land use at 'local level’ is associated with access by individuals or groups to diverse resource bases. Fundamental issues for planning land use in these complex environments revolve around diversity of land resource, access to resources, social organisation, institutions for management of resources and the perceptions of the people about the resources and the associated decision-making process at grassroots. In this context, understandings of the complex set of resources available and the opportunities of land users to make a living in agriculture and its associated decision-making process by individuals or groups is essential. This study has undertaken the task of analysing information produced in a municipality and ejidos in central Mexico using participatory methods for collection of information relevant for planning and the production of maps of resources at municipality and ejido level using participatory GIS. Participatory mapping of resources at municipality and ejido level not only allowed the mapping of resources according to the perceptions of the people, but also made the GIS accessible to people on the ground; they were able to make their own maps for understanding land use change and as a base for land use planning. This information was compared with maps produced either by official government agencies or from official statistics. In the former case the approach taken for map production was to use as a basis standard technical procedures for resources eg soil/land use classifications. This contrasted with the 'practical' approach adopted by the ejidatarios. In both cases the accuracy and reliability of the official maps and 'statistics' was open to question. Decision-making for land use based on information from the 'ground' emerges as an adaptive process, depending on government policie