Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 5.
Muddling Towards Cooperation:
Spontaneous Orders and Shared Learning
in Malinau District, Indonesia 1
Eva Wollenberg, Ramses Iwan, Godwin Limberg, Moira Moeliono,
Steve Rhee and Made Sudana
Social institutions are essential to guiding
cooperation amongst groups with different interests. But how can
cooperation occur where such institutions are weak and unable to protect
and accommodate the interests of the less powerful? In this chapter, we
describe the experience of facilitating local communities to manage their
forest in Malinau District, Indonesia, during the Otonomi Daerah reform
period (begun in 1998), when social institutions for cooperation were
unstable, uncertain and rarely shared, and where local groups competed
intensely to capture benefits from forests.
The case examines how a CIFOR research team 2 sought to strengthen
local communities’ access to forest benefits and influence in government
by enhancing cooperation amongst villagers and between villagers and
government officials. Because of the weak, uncertain institutional setting
and the complex shifting political landscape in Malinau, active collaboration
proved difficult to achieve. Through successive trials, however, the team
learned instead to work with, and build on, ‘spontaneous orders’ of