Stories of Local Mapping: Building Climate Resilience Together
Stories of Local Mapping
Latin America and the Caribbean
Hi John,
The climate crisis is no longer a distant headline. It’s personal. For me, it was a heat wave that hit my grandmother hard this summer. For many of us, it’s a flooded street or a dry season that makes water feel like a privilege.
These moments are hard, they also show the strength of communities that work together. When the water rises, neighbors are the first to respond. It’s the one who knows which streets flood, the leader who keeps a list of who needs help, the group chat that becomes an early warning system overnight.
This month we marked the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, and we want you to meet the communities across Latin America and the Caribbean who are mapping their territories and bringing that knowledge to decision-making tables, together with governments, universities and humanitarian partners.
How does your community prepare for the climate crisis? Hit reply and tell me. I’d love to share your stories in a future edition.
Best,
Mar
Senior Comms Strategist for Latin America and the Caribbean
Our last coordinates
UNAULA and HOT join forces for five more years of community mapping in Medellín
On Medellín’s hillsides, the people who know the territory best are the ones who live there. Since 2023, community leaders have been turning that knowledge into maps.
On October 6, UNAULA and HOT signed a five-year cooperation agreement. It builds on three years of the Hillside Mapping School, run with UNAULA’s research center POMOTE.
What the school has achieved so far:
30+ community organizations trained in open mapping tools
40 women community leaders trained
20 community mapping projects and 9 risk analysis maps
15 public officials at working tables with communities
Now the school enters a new phase. It will add a Social Narratives Medialab, a Hillside Observatory for community monitoring, and a public repository of community maps. The goal is a Medellín cared for and planned from its own neighborhoods.
Climate Resilience in Latin America and the Caribbean
Behind every map there is a person: a student tracing rooftops on a Saturday, a neighbor flying a drone for the first time, a volunteer double-checking a map so it can be trusted. This International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, we celebrate what they built together.
Cooling Maipú, one green space at a time
In Maipú, Chile, heat waves are getting stronger, and green spaces can make the difference. To find where shade and parks are needed most, the Municipality teamed up with neighborhood leaders in Sol Poniente to map every public green space.
What they mapped:
71 public open spaces added to OpenStreetMap
12 plazas recorded on Mapillary
Data collected with KoboToolbox, with local knowledge from neighborhood social leaders
The Municipality will now cross this data with heat island information to find priority areas for urban regeneration. The goal is a city better prepared for climate change, especially for heat waves.
Rebuilding the Nature Isle: Dominica prepares for the next storm
In 2017, Hurricane Maria left deep marks on Dominica’s landscape and communities. As extreme storms become more frequent, the island has turned toward more sustainable ways of living and rebuilding, and that requires up-to-date data about how people live and where they are most exposed.
A local team and the communities most exposed to storms shared their knowledge of the territory. With HOT’s support, they used open mapping for:
Mapping the current state of the island’s main urban area
Combining remote and aerial mapping with local knowledge
Growing a local mapping culture to prepare for future climate hazards
What began on one island can now serve as a model for other Small Island Developing States across the Caribbean.
Rooted in the land: climate resilience from the Amazon
When forests burn, rivers change course or illegal mining moves in, Indigenous communities are the first to feel it, and the first to respond. In Bolivia, Colombia and Guatemala, they are combining ancestral knowledge with drones, OpenStreetMap and ChatMap to anticipate climate risks and care for the forests that sustain their lives.
Three territories building resilience:
Bolivia: In Sapecho, Tacana community members, park rangers and firefighters mapped their territory together to prevent and respond to forest fires, with UMSA.
Colombia: The Inga people of the Wairari Atún Sacha Cabildo produced the first open orthophoto of their territory with UNAULA’s POMOTE. These maps now support their land restitution process, a key step in securing the territory they protect.
Guatemala: San José Poaquil went from a blank spot on OpenStreetMap to a fully mapped territory. Its ancestral authorities now use that data to guide a community forest management plan and monitor threats like illegal logging.
Healthy forests are one of our strongest defenses against the climate crisis, and the communities who live in them know best how to protect them.
LAC Hub Around the World
From Ecuador to Guatemala: building bridges for preparedness
Fabrizio Scrollini, LAC Regional Director, met with national and local governments, academic institutions and humanitarian partners to strengthen collaboration on open data for anticipatory action and community preparedness.
Climate Resilience in Medellín
Céline Jacquin, Senior Manager, Latin Americaand Juan Arellano, Communications and Community Specialist, Latin America and the Caribbean, hosted the working breakfast “Open Mapping for Urban Climate Resilience,” bringing together public institutions, civil society and academia to discuss the region’s needs for open geospatial data. A conversation we look forward to continuing.
What we are reading:
Check out the latest blogs and articles published about how communities in the region are mapping their territories.
🎶 This newsletter came together with BABIECA!by Guitarricadelafuente playing in the background. Got a favorite track that keeps your mapping flow going? Share it with us!
This newsletter was written by Mar Marín.
Ibrahim Fatai and Pauline Omagwa contributed as editors.
