Itanagar, September 15: Keyi Panyor district in Arunachal Pradesh has launched an integrated landscape and village-level mapping exercise under the Keyi Panyor Mission Plan 2040 (KPMP 2040), bringing together government agencies, scientific institutions, universities, elected representatives and civil-society organisations to create a knowledge base for long-term development.
The initiative was launched at an inception meeting on Tuesday at the DK Convention Centre in Itanagar under the leadership of Toko Tatung, MLA of the 16-Yachuli constituency.
The Integrated Landscape Mapping and Know Your Basti initiative aims to combine geospatial and scientific data with community knowledge on land, water, forests, biodiversity, agriculture, livelihoods, settlements, climate risks and public services.
A key component of the programme will be the involvement of local youth as “Ecosystem Stewards”. They will be trained to work within their own bastis, documenting and verifying local knowledge while bringing together household experiences, traditional knowledge, customary practices and official data.
Tatung said the district, being newly created, had an opportunity to make informed development decisions before choices became difficult to reverse.
“We do not want technology or institutions to become bigger than the people they are meant to serve. We need the best science available, but we also need science that is willing to listen,” he said.
During the technical session, Samita Manohar presented the CoRE Stack ecosystem, Commons Connect and the Know Your Landscape platform, including the tools proposed for the Know Your Basti and landscape-mapping exercise.
Deputy Commissioner Ankita Mishra and KPMP 2040 CEO M.J. Vijayan discussed operational issues concerning the platform, field-level data collection, institutional coordination and adapting the exercise to Keyi Panyor’s local conditions.
The meeting emphasised that local youth should not be limited to the role of enumerators. Under the proposed Ecosystem Stewardship model, they will be trained as local researchers capable of documenting, verifying and retaining knowledge within the district while working with scientific and technical institutions.
Vijayan said the mapping exercise was part of the broader 20-point KPMP 2040 framework, which covers democratic governance, education and health, livelihoods and employment, agroecology and food systems, forests and water, climate resilience, women and youth, indigenous culture, infrastructure, renewable energy, disaster preparedness and strengthening district institutions.
The meeting also discussed the proposed Mini Secretariat for Keyi Panyor, which will be developed through collaboration between the district administration and the KPMP team under Tatung’s leadership. The project aims to combine public administration with indigenous design, local identity and modern technology, with Padma Awardee Rajeev Sethi leading the design component.
Representatives and experts from the Arunachal Pradesh Biodiversity Board, APSAC, Agriculture and Horticulture departments, Geological Survey of India, State Forest Research Institute, Botanical and Zoological Survey institutions, GBPNIHE, KVK, Rajiv Gandhi University and ArSRLM participated in the consultation.
The initiative is also expected to involve the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) and Foundation for Ecological Security (FES India), while the Participatory Action Research Coalition of India (PARCI) is facilitating the broader collaboration. IIT Delhi’s technical engagement through the CoRE Stack ecosystem is expected to support the mapping and data architecture.
The next phase will involve finalising the mapping methodology, identifying pilot bastis, training Ecosystem Stewards and assigning responsibilities among participating institutions.
The district administration and KPMP 2040 team said the broader objective was to develop Keyi Panyor as a pilot for a development model combining scientific evidence, indigenous knowledge, public institutions and community participation.
“Do not remain guests of KPMP 2040. Become part of it,” Tatung told participating institutions.
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