The project advances an innovative integration of participatory mapping with climate-governance research to address water insecurity in San Cristóbal. Rather than relying on conventional top-down assessments, the team centers residents’ lived experiences and locally improvised solutions as essential data for adaptive infrastructure planning.
By documenting spatial, technical, and governance gaps in the island’s water system and pairing them with community-led coping strategies, the work reframes everyday practices as anticipatory forms of climate governance—an approach that challenges prevailing planning models and expands the toolkit available for island resilience research.
The project’s design ensures that residents retain ownership of the tools and narratives they co-create, strengthening their ability to influence the implementation of the Galápagos 2030 Strategic Plan. A structured return visit for community validation further reinforces this reciprocal model, positioning the project not only as an academic contribution but as a practical mechanism for enhancing institutional responsiveness and local climate resilience in one of the world’s most ecologically vulnerable regions.
