Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

122 • Trikurnianti Kusumanto
not able to influence their context (Garben and Seligman 1980 cited in
Maarleveld and Dangbégnon 1999). It was ACM that provided the trigger
for actors to learn in their complex environment. We nonetheless cannot
say how best to facilitate learning in complex settings and believe that a
mix of both complex and structured learning should be deployed in such
circumstances.
A third strength: ACM addressed the prevailing power differences
among stakeholders and associated skewed decision making in resource
management. In Jambi, a handful of village elites, all men, dominated
decision making. In addition, power imbalances existed between women
and men and between settlers and the original inhabitants. In Pasir, the
government often dominated decision-making proceedings, in turn
influencing outcomes. Such power imbalances created their own feedback
loops: in terms of rights and capacity, less powerful stakeholders were
perceived to be less legitimate.
Two particular features of ACM helped in dealing with this challenge. First,
by focusing group learning on developing a sense of interdependence and
positive appreciation for one another, ACM stimulated the recognition of
people’s legitimacy. Recurring throughout the learning were moments when
the playing field was to some extent level, and such moments supported
the gradual recognition of others’ legitimacy. Another ACM feature that
helped redress power imbalances was its emphasis on substance rather than
relational issues. Multistakeholder settings tended to focus on how actors
related to one another, often leading to the positioning of different actors
against one another, inhibiting information and communication flows and,
hence, learning. By focusing learning and deliberations on substantive
matters, actors gradually learned to act and value differently.
ACM also has its limitations. First, adaptive collaborative management was
inadvertently more attractive to those who were financially well-off and
better organised. Because of its expense—in both time and opportunity
costs for meetings—the poor and less organised actors were unable to divert
their limited personal resources to learning activities. Participation meant
forgone financial opportunities, and because the poor were more likely
to miss meetings, participation was consequently unequal. Furthermore,
ACM required extra efforts of our team to bring actors together, in turn
raising the team’s transaction costs.