Power Mapping for Conservation Platforms -- Juan Diego Villacis

Why power mapping before convening

Every conservation platform makes the same mistake: they invite everyone they can think of to the first meeting and hope the right dynamics emerge. They do not. The organization with the budget dominates the agenda. The indigenous federation with territorial sovereignty sits quietly because no one structured their role. The NGO with the data never gets asked for it because the convener did not know they had it.

Power mapping is not an academic exercise. It is the difference between a platform that produces coordinated execution and one that produces meetings. You need to know who can block you, who can fund you, who has the data, and who controls the land before you send a single invitation.

The four dimensions of power

In conservation governance, power does not live in one place. It is distributed across four dimensions, and they almost never overlap in the same organization.

Dimension 01

Administrative Authority

Who can issue permits, allocate budgets, and enforce regulations. In Morona Santiago, the Prefectura controls provincial planning and budget allocation. MAATE controls environmental permits. The municipal governments control land use.

Dimension 02

Territorial Legitimacy

Who has historical and legal claim to the land. FPIC rights, indigenous nations, ancestral territories. FICSH in Morona Santiago represents Shuar communities across the entire province. Without them, no conservation agreement has legal or moral standing.

Dimension 03

Technical Capacity

Who has data, expertise, and implementation capability. Conservation International has monitoring systems and donor relationships. Universidad Estatal Amazonica has research infrastructure. WCS has species-specific expertise. This is the dimension most often undervalued in political negotiations.

Dimension 04

Financial Leverage

Who controls or channels the money. GEF through UNDP. The Green Climate Fund through accredited entities. Bilateral cooperation (GIZ, USAID). Provincial budget allocations. The organization that controls funding controls the timeline of everything else.

Field note

In all three provinces, no single organization scored high on more than two of these dimensions. The Prefectura had administrative authority but limited technical capacity. Conservation International had technical capacity and financial leverage but no territorial legitimacy. FICSH had territorial legitimacy but limited administrative authority. This distribution is why you need a platform in the first place.

The interactive power map

Plot your stakeholders on two axes: formal authority (permits, budgets, legal mandate) and practical influence (information control, relationships, implementation capacity). The quadrant where they land tells you how to engage them.

Stakeholder Power Map

Formal Authority (low to high)

Q-II Formal Gatekeepers High authority, low influence. Can block but rarely drive.

Q-I Anchor Partners High authority, high influence. Your platform's center of gravity.

Q-IV Peripheral Participants Low authority, low influence. Inform but don't build around.

Q-III Shadow Power Low authority, high influence. Often controls information or relationships.

Practical Influence (low to high)

Organization name

Sector

Formal Authority (1-3)

Practical Influence (1-3)

No stakeholders mapped yet. Add your first organization above.

The three must-have tests

After mapping, run every stakeholder through these three tests. If any stakeholder passes even one, they are not optional.

Can they block a critical process?

MAATE can refuse to issue environmental permits. The Prefectura can withhold budget allocations. An indigenous federation can invoke FPIC and halt any activity on their territory. If an organization can stop something essential from happening, they must be inside the platform, not watching from outside.

In Morona Santiago, FICSH's ability to block any conservation agreement on Shuar territory made them not just a participant but a co-architect of the entire platform structure. Ignoring veto power does not make it disappear. It makes it adversarial.

Would their absence damage credibility?

A conservation platform in the Ecuadorian Amazon without indigenous representation is not a governance mechanism. It is a coordination meeting among outsiders. A platform without the provincial government is an NGO coalition, not an inter-institutional body.

Ask: if this organization is not at the table, who will question the platform's right to make decisions? If the answer is "international donors," "local communities," or "the media," their absence is a legitimacy hole that undermines everything you build.

Do they control irreplaceable resources?

Conservation International had the monitoring technology and donor relationships that no other organization in Orellana could replicate. Universidad Estatal Amazonica had the only long-term ecological datasets in the province. GIZ had the bilateral funding commitment.

If an organization controls a resource, a dataset, a relationship, or a capability that cannot be obtained elsewhere, their participation is not optional. Map what each organization controls that is unique, and you will see which seats at the table are structural necessities.

Three power dynamics that will surprise you

FICSH in Morona Santiago has no regulatory power, no budget authority, and no legal mandate to issue permits. On paper, they should be peripheral. In practice, they controlled every conservation agreement because no activity could proceed on Shuar territory without their consent.

Formal authority measures what the law says. Practical influence measures what actually happens. These are different things. Your power map must capture both, which is why this tool uses two axes instead of one.

In Sucumbios, the organization that compiled the baseline data for the provincial environmental assessment set the terms for every subsequent discussion. The data defined the problem. The problem defined the priorities. The priorities defined the roadmap.

When mapping practical influence, pay close attention to who holds the information. Monitoring data, budget figures, community census results, GIS layers, species inventories. The organization that produces or controls this information has outsized influence on what the platform decides to do, even if they have no formal authority.

The most consequential decisions in all three Cooperation Tables were made in bilateral conversations between two organizations, outside the formal meeting. The Prefectura and FICSH agreeing on community priorities before the plenary. Conservation International and GIZ aligning funding commitments before the sub-table session.

Your power map should note which organizations have strong pre-existing bilateral relationships. These pairs will drive or block your platform's most important decisions, regardless of your governance structure. Map the relationships, not just the organizations.

The mapping process

A power map built from your desk is a guess. A power map built from conversations is intelligence. Here is the 16-day process.

Days 1-3

Step 1: Build initial roster

List every organization operating in the territory. Government agencies, indigenous federations, NGOs, academic institutions, private companies. Do not filter yet. Your goal is completeness, not selectivity. Use existing project documents, provincial registries, and donor reports to build the list. Aim for 30-40 names before filtering.

Days 4-10

Step 2: Key informant interviews

Interview 8-12 people who know the territory's institutional landscape. Former project coordinators, senior government officials, indigenous leaders, long-serving NGO staff. These conversations give you the informal power map that no organizational chart reveals.

The five interview questions

"If you needed to get a conservation agreement signed in this province, which three organizations would you talk to first?"
"Which organization, if they refused to participate, would make a multi-stakeholder platform impossible?"
"Who controls the data that everyone else depends on?"
"Which two organizations have the strongest bilateral relationship in this territory?"
"Who has tried to build something like this before, and why did it succeed or fail?"

Days 11-12

Step 3: Map the four dimensions

For each organization on your roster, score their presence across all four dimensions: administrative authority, territorial legitimacy, technical capacity, and financial leverage. Use a simple 1-3 scale. This is not meant to be precise. It is meant to surface patterns. The organization that scores 3 on territorial legitimacy and 1 on everything else is a very different stakeholder than the one scoring 2 across all four.

Day 13

Step 4: Plot the canvas

Use the interactive map above. For each organization, translate your four-dimension scores into two composite scores: formal authority (combining administrative authority and territorial legitimacy) and practical influence (combining technical capacity and financial leverage). Plot them. The quadrant distribution tells you the shape of your platform's power landscape.

Day 14

Step 5: Apply the three tests

Run every organization through the Veto Test, the Legitimacy Test, and the Execution Test. Any organization that passes at least one test is a structural necessity. Remove organizations that fail all three from your convening list. They can be informed stakeholders without being platform members.

Days 15-16

Step 6: Validate with two trusted insiders

Share your completed map with two people who know the territory deeply and can tell you what you got wrong. One should be from government. One should be from civil society or an indigenous authority. Their corrections will be the most valuable input in this entire process. They will identify organizations you underrated, relationships you missed, and power dynamics that only emerge in private conversations.

Do not skip validation

In Orellana, initial desk research placed one NGO in Q-IV (peripheral). Key informant interviews revealed they controlled the only functioning community monitoring network in the province. After validation, they moved to Q-III (shadow power) and became a core sub-table member. Your initial assessment will have at least 2-3 misplacements this significant.