Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

124 • Trikurnianti Kusumanto
Another lesson learned is that ACM enables management initiatives to
handle imbalances—in resource distribution, for example—because it can
insert learning in socio-political processes. An ACM-inspired decisionmaking
structure uses social learning as an instrument for the stakeholders
to arrive at political decisions. In the process of decision-making, previous
decisions are adjusted if the stakeholders deem it necessary.
Lastly, we learned that the major outcomes of the ACM approach are
improvements in human and social capital—the prerequisite for long-term
improvements in forest resources and human well-being. Our relatively
short-term research indicates that adapting old configurations of human
and social relationships to new constructions supported the formation of
livelihood assets—natural, financial and physical.
Those lessons provide a necessary base for considering whether an ACMbased
decision-making structure can address the two shortcomings of
present forest management systems. We begin with what Lee (1999) says
about the ways people organise themselves for solving different decision
problems (Figure 4-6): in structures where stakeholders are organised
around rules of management with agreed outcomes and means of
management (representative structures), structures where stakeholders
negotiate about management outcomes with already agreed means
(bureaucratic structures), or structures where stakeholders seek to agree
about the means of management with already agreed outcomes (collegial
structures). Conflicts, Lee suggests, are decision situations that cannot be
handled through one of these structures because stakeholders can agree
about neither the management outcomes nor the means to achieve them.
Conflict requires that stakeholders shift from an unstructured to a structured
context. This is often done by either ‘settling conflicts’ (i.e., seeking to agree
what outcomes to target) or ‘planning’ for a future consensus (i.e., looking
for agreement on what means to deploy). Each path has its drawbacks,
Lee asserts. Settling conflicts may not work because there may simply be
no common ground for disputant parties. Planning for future consensus
may illuminate not only opportunities to collaborate but also incompatible
differences. Initially cooperative parties may then disrupt the processes or
even decline to participate. Given these weaknesses, Lee argues, learning
becomes an essential mode of handling conflict in complex environments.