Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 4: Improving Forest Quality and Livelihoods in Indonesia • 121
‘objectivist’ learning strategy, aimed at the transfer of knowledge developed
elsewhere, and hence were not conducive to local learning (e.g., van der
Veen 2000). Even promises of future material gains 11 did not encourage
actors to learn new ways of valuing and acting.
The core feature of an ACM intervention is its deliberate learning. In
our experience, the extent to which ACM was able to facilitate learning
depended on two conditions:
• local actors’ motivation to learn to cope with and adapt to social
and natural dynamics; and
• the degree of complexity of the phenomena that actors must learn
about.
Several aspects of ACM motivated learning among local stakeholders: the
substance of the learning, the structure of learning, and the promotion of a
particular mode of learning. Since in ACM the learning substance was the
local needs identified by the stakeholders themselves, it encouraged learning
and behavioural changes. Further, ACM motivated actors’ learning by the
way the learning was structured, phased and iterated: complex phenomena
were broken down into simpler pieces, allowing actors to work through
the paradoxes and contradictory values while gradually giving meaning
to them. Lastly, actors were motivated to learn by the mode of learning:
through communication. In complex and dynamic settings, learning
consists of communication amongst individuals with different perspectives
who construct a collective understanding about phenomena (van der Veen
2000). In ACM, facilitated group processes were essential in stimulating
communication for joint learning and construction of collective insights.
The relationship between complexity and learning, however, is not very
clear (van der Veen 2000). Although some learning theorists suggest
that learning can only happen if complex phenomena are reduced to
simpler parts by structuring the content of learning 12 , others believe
that the more complex a situation, the better the chance that people
can generate insights 13 . It is therefore often suggested that facilitators of
learning should design learning such that the content is complex enough
to create ‘rich pictures’ to learners. In our case, the initial response of
stakeholders indicated that they perceived their situation as too complex
to begin learning on their own. Apparently, the complex environment did
not function as a learning trigger. Social and ecological dynamics were
overwhelming, and people found it extremely difficult to find alternatives
to current practices. Learned helplessness occurred because people were