Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

96 • Trikurnianti Kusumanto
strategies, generally lack the feedback mechanisms that are necessary to
incorporate new management information (e.g., the changing resource
needs of local stakeholders) and adjust management to new conditions.
Local people’s forest management systems, on the other hand, are to some
extent responsive to local changes (e.g., people adopt shorter fallow periods
if the population increases) but are weak in responding to new demands (like
assuming greater decision-making role under decentralisation) and rapid
changes at wider levels (like those generated by economic globalisation).
At the local level, because of recent social and economic pressures, earlier
local systems of control and management have eroded and, where still
existent, tend to be weak where forest resources are subject to competing
claims (Wollenberg and Kartodihardjo 2002; Campbell 2002). They often
lack legitimacy because local people are losing trust in their local leaders,
who are often accused of pursuing their own interests, or these systems lack
official support. As a consequence, the internal cohesion and legitimacy
necessary to navigate complex and changing management situations is
missing.
Limits of current approaches
Attempts to deal with the problems date to the early 1970s on Java and
the mid-1980s on the other major islands. In response to the failure of
commercial extractive forestry in sustaining forest quality and people’s
livelihoods and to the increasing conflicts between forestry projects and
local communities, attention has progressively been paid by government,
the international donor community and nongovernmental organisations to
participatory forestry activities. Indeed, the participation of local people in
forest management has been formally accepted as a fundamental basis for
effective sustainable and equitable forest management.
Nevertheless, despite almost four decades of people-oriented efforts,
the unsustainable and inequitable use of forests continues unabated. We
believe that the limited success of participatory initiatives thus far is due
to their inadequacy in addressing the two identified factors underlying
the problems: incompatible claims on forests and the inflexibility of most
management systems to adapt to changes.