UT faculty and graduate students in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of U.S. and Latin American researchers conducted an exhaustive literature review and organized a two-day workshop on participatory mapping, climate change, and forest rights, on November 19–20, 2010. The workshop included a public event attended by 70 UT students and faculty members and presentations by Helena Andrade, Colombia; Micaela Hernández Meza and Celerina Ruiz Núñez, Chiapas, Mexico, and Dr. Joe Bryan, University of Colorado.

Community planning workshop led by the Maya women’s Kinal Antsetik, Chiapas, Mexico. Photo courtesy Micaela Hernández Meza and Celerina Ruiz Núñez.

Led by Initiative Coordinator Dr. Bjorn Sletto, the group of faculty members and students partnered with Rights and Resources Initiative and Universidad de Los Andes and organized an international forum on participatory mapping, land and resource rights in Bogota, Colombia, in June 2011. The forum facilitated discussion among 50 representatives of funding institutions, the academic community in the United States and Latin America, and Afro-descendant and indigenous communities who are involved in issues of climate change, land rights, and forest reform. The forum also had extensive participation by students and resulted in the book, Cartografia participative y derechos al territorio y los recursos (LLILAS 2011; ed. Bjorn Sletto), which includes contributions from conference participants.

Discussion at the Forum, “Cartografia participative y derechos al territorio y los recursos,” held June 1-2, 2011 at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia. Photo courtesy Marcela Wagner.

In fall 2012, Carlos Salamanca and colleagues at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario organized the conference, “El mapeo participativo y los derechos territoriales de los pueblos indígenas,” which furthered continuing dialogue among participants in the LLILAS initiative. Presentations by LLILAS Initiative participants and UT-Austin students were published in an edited volume accompanying the conference, Mapas y derechos: Experiencias y aprendizajes en América Latina (Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario; 2012).