Participatory, Multi-Criteria Evaluation Methods as a Means to Increase the Legitimacy and Sustainability of Land Use Planning Processes. The Case of the Chaco Region in Salta, Argentina.

Conflicts over land use and ownership are common in South America and generate frequent confrontations among indigenous peoples, small-scale farmers, and large-scale agricultural producers. We argue in this paper that an accurate identification of these conflicts, together with a participatory evaluation of their importance, will increase the social legitimacy of land use planning processes, rendering decision-making more sustainable in the long term. We describe here a participatory, multi-criteria conflict assessment model developed to identify, locate, and categorize land tenure and use conflicts.