Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

108 • Trikurnianti Kusumanto
Box 4-2. Women’s preconceptions about original and settler
communities
The women’s loan and savings activities in Jambi, assisted by our women’s
facilitator, offered a way for the original Minangkabau women and settler
women to reflect on preconceived perceptions of each other. When we
started, the women settlers told us that they had felt discriminated against
by the loan and savings group regulations and that Minangkabau women had
received preferential treatment. Not surprisingly, the Minangkabau women
disagreed. The women’s facilitator then began encouraging the women to
explain to each other what the loan and savings activities meant for them.
The sessions revealed that the loans had helped the Minangkabau women
meet day-to-day household financial needs, but most settler women saw the
activities as an opportunity to learn about local circumstances and culture. As
the women reflected on their respective concerns, they began analysing the
conditions that explained the actions and behaviour of the women from the
other group. (Diaw and Kusumanto 2005)
Planning phase
The aim of the planning phase was to generate strategies to improve the
identified problem situations and make plans for implementation. Basic
ingredients here were the stakeholders’ knowledge about problem situations
and their resources and capacities for making joint improvements, both
identified in the diagnostic phase. By aiming at improving problem
situations, rather than solving problems, it was expected that conditions
for learning would be created. Too much emphasis on finding solutions
might encourage the actors to propose different or competing solutions,
putting different stakeholders in opposition to one another. Moreover, a
particular problem might have various solutions, and stakeholders with
different backgrounds and capacities could bring their specific strengths to
the collaborative processes.
The planning phase comprised two stages: framing problem situations, and
finding strategies to improve these situations. As in the diagnostic phase,
the stages here were not discrete or structured but rather mingled into
one planning process. In both case studies, the planning process lasted an
extended period and was not a single event.
Problem framing was necessary to begin the search for joint strategies. It
facilitates learning in complex settings, as where a given problem situation