New Information and Communication Technologies for Public Participation in Ecuadorian Land Management. Case Study Cuenca

Abstract

Public participation in Ecuadorian land management has many challenges due to its effectiveness, since most of these processes have taken the form of social information meetings, where proposals are made, known as finished products, evidencing the lack of active citizen involvement. Added to this is the scarcity of tools and methods that lead to a compromise between democratic decision-making and expert scientific knowledge. In this context, these processes require a radical change in which new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are proposed as an alternative, valuing the knowledge and opinions of the population in relation to a given territory. New Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) recognize the existence of a new digital ecosystem in which the communication process is freed from the space-time factor, dissociating the experience from the physical space, and making virtual simultaneity and timeless fragmented space possible. This paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of using these technologies and their contribution to public participation in the land management processes in Cuenca, Ecuador, using Geographic Information Systems for Public Participation as a specific case.