Geospatial Technology for Equitable Resource Allocation
Creating a foundation for technology use based around governance, education, and inclusion
This post is a follow up to this one about leveraging traditional and modern sciences.
For the past month, heavy rains and flash floods resulting from the El Niño climate pattern, have caused death and widespread destruction in the Horn of Africa. This is in stark contrast to the prolonged drought of the past three years, a cycle of drought and flooding made more extreme by climate change. In Kenya, the arid and semi arid lands (ASALs), which make up 80% of the landmass, are particularly vulnerable to weather extremes, where the historically marginalized population has not seen the same development gains as the rest of the country.
Underdevelopment in the ASALs is slowly improving as a result of devolution, a constitutional change passed in 2013, which granted new power and authority to 47 county governments, shifting responsibility for the provision of basic services to the local level. Although the national government provides revenue, local governments have struggled with the capacity to effectively manage their public resources. As a result many international actors, including USAID, the World Bank, and Mercy Corps have all stepped in to support these governments in providing equitable and inclusive allocation of resources.
For the past year, Mercy Corps has been partnering with the governments of Wajir and Garissa counties to improve geospatial capacity, bringing geolocated data from sectors (including health, education, natural resources, etc.) together for analysis and decision making. This has helped both counties not only to meet the national requirements for spatial planning, but also to build a longer term pipeline of skills in this area, include underrepresented pastoralist communities, and coordinate services across NGO partners in the region. This article outlines three ways in which this program and the use of geospatial tools are supporting the equitable allocation of resources:
Building unified governance mechanisms: In response to the disasters of the past few months, county governments have realized the potential for spatial plans to support effective disaster planning. Through a participatory planning session, all development actors worked together to develop flood maps to anticipate which communities would be particularly vulnerable to flooding. The county then used this to disseminate consistent guidance about evacuations across all non-governmental actors as well as to compile all relief efforts (such as cash distributions, food assistance, etc.) in a single dashboard. Doing so has helped ensure that assistance is both benefiting the most vulnerable and being dispersed equitably across flood affected regions.
Building a pipeline of new talent: In partnership with Garissa University, Mercy Corps helped set up a geospatial innovations center, which expands the curriculum to train students on the specific skills needed by local governments, including modules on using geospatial tools for disaster risk reduction, rangeland management, and health. Other universities in the region have recognized how this educational resource builds specific expertise on the unique issues facing the ASAL regions and have expressed interest in partnering. And most importantly, this partnership creates a direct pipeline of geospatial expertise for local governments, working to ensure that this analysis continues after Mercy Corps’ partnership.
Including pastoralist communities: Mercy Corps has been intentional about including rangeland management committees (elected leaders from each ward in a county) in county level rangeland management. These committees are tasked with developing plans and bylaws for rangeland management which the county helps enforce. In partnership with rangeland management committees, the county rangeland council has been supporting the use of satellite imagery to identify 500 acres for brush clearing and reseeding.
Long term, we hope that this intentional approach to bringing county governments, pastoralist representatives, and the local university together around geospatial tools will help foster an inclusive and data informed governance system for the ASAL regions. As the region adapts to the increasing severity of droughts and floods, having these systems in place will move vulnerable communities from a cycle of humanitarian assistance to one of long term climate resilience.
