Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

126 • Trikurnianti Kusumanto
ACM can thus be seen as one of the ‘structural innovations’ called for
by Röling and Maarleveld (1999) that create space for value orientations
and promote collective action. We suggest that through its very learning
ACM merges Lee’s three distinct decision structures into one coherent
structure, or platform, where causations are collectively sought by way
of ‘action research’, outcomes are negotiated, and rules of management
are collaboratively applied. Conflict situations and divergence are not
handled reactively as they arise or addressed only after they have become
intractable (or not structurally manageable); rather, as an essential element
of learning, these are bounded by social processes steered collectively by
the contending stakeholders. Learning also shapes space for negotiation
and value orientation in the process of decision making, in turn making
management systems more adaptive to new conditions.
Conclusion: windows of opportunities
Among the implications for the Indonesian forest context, those associated
with the country’s decentralisation merit our special attention. ACM’s
most important contribution lies in the area of decision-making about
forests, and under decentralisation, the state is reducing its involvement in
the forestry sector and transferring decision-making power to civil society
and local actors. Past people-oriented forestry policies and programs largely
failed because they did not sufficiently anticipate changing relationships
among actors who have different claims on the same resources, or because
rapid and complex social and political changes meant unfamiliar problems
for local-level, as well as for central decision makers.
Within this context, ACM can help different stakeholders critically analyse
the problems they confront and better understand the circumstances
under which certain decisions should be made and rules applied. It could
help the country in its current search for governance structures that allow
stakeholders at different levels of decision-making to interact and share
authority.
ACM not only pays attention to the often-slighted social and political
processes in forest management, but also turns such processes into an
essential element of learning. In ACM, the handling of divergent views is
less conflict resolution than an inherent part of multiactor decision-making
structures and processes, and learning shapes space for the negotiations