Open Mapping for Women Environmental Defenders in the Colombian Amazon
Colombia • Community-Led
Collaborative initiative between the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and the Alianza de Mujeres Tejedoras de Vida del Putumayo. The project strengthens women environmental defenders to use open mapping technologies to monitor water resources, biodiversity, and environmental threats in the Colombian Amazon.
The initiative emerged from the NASA Lifelines Speed Dating event held in Bogotá in January 2026, where humanitarian and technical organizations met to develop new collaborations using Earth observation and geospatial data for crisis preparedness and climate resilience. Through this process, HOT partnered with the Alianza de Mujeres Tejedoras de Vida to design a pilot initiative focused on community-led environmental monitoring in Putumayo.
Through a training-of-trainers model, members of the Guardianas del Agua, the environmental monitoring network of the Alianza de Mujeres Tejedoras de Vida, learn to use open tools such as OpenStreetMap, ChatMap, and drone imagery to generate geospatial data that supports territorial monitoring, early warning systems, and community-led environmental protection.
CONTEXT
Communities in the department of Putumayo face growing environmental pressures linked to extractive industries, land use change, and threats to water and forest ecosystems. Members of the organization’s environmental network, known as the Guardianas del Agua, identified the need for technical tools that would allow them to document environmental threats, generate territorial evidence, and strengthen their advocacy in decision-making spaces such as territorial planning processes and watershed management plans.
At the same time, the principles of the Escazú Agreement highlight the importance of democratizing access to environmental information and enabling communities to participate in environmental governance. However, many local leaders lack access to the geospatial tools needed to generate the data required for these processes.
APPROACH
The project implements a training-of-trainers model designed to build long-term local capacity in open mapping technologies for environmental monitoring and territorial protection.
The process begins with a participatory diagnostic to identify the specific data needs of the Tejedoras de Vida network and determine which open mapping tools best support their environmental monitoring priorities, including water source monitoring, identification of environmental threats, and documentation of biodiversity and ecosystem conditions.
A core group of women leaders from the Guardianas del Agua network participates in an in-person training workshop in Putumayo using HOT's End-to-End (E2E) methodology, grounded in learning by doing and community-based field exercises. Participants are introduced to Drone Tasking Manager (DroneTM) for aerial imagery coordination, ChatMap for collecting georeferenced field observations through familiar platforms like WhatsApp, and HOT uMap for visualizing and sharing community-generated data.
Following the training, participants receive ongoing mentorship to support the development of local mapping initiatives focused on environmental monitoring, territorial protection, and early warning systems.
