Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...
Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...
Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...
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Chapter 5: Muddl<strong>in</strong>g Towards Cooperation <strong>in</strong> Mal<strong>in</strong>au • 137<br />
to more than 60,000 ha <strong>in</strong> Mal<strong>in</strong>au from April 2000 to August 2001. Rapid<br />
unsusta<strong>in</strong>able timber extraction resulted, with relatively small benefits to<br />
communities (Limberg 2004; Kamelarczyk and Andersen 2004). Some<br />
forward-look<strong>in</strong>g communities refused <strong>of</strong>fers <strong>of</strong> huge sums <strong>of</strong> money to<br />
log their land (Iwan 2003), choos<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong>stead to conserve their forest.<br />
The central government has s<strong>in</strong>ce made such permits illegal, although<br />
the district government is still seek<strong>in</strong>g opportunities to grant small-scale<br />
concessions to generate <strong>in</strong>come. Confusion about the classification <strong>of</strong> land<br />
functions and conflict over claims to forestland have been frequent s<strong>in</strong>ce<br />
reforms began.<br />
As the new district government has attempted to establish its authority<br />
and presence, opportunities for claim<strong>in</strong>g forest benefits have become more<br />
circumscribed and access to government <strong>of</strong>ficials has become formalised<br />
and distant. Local government is at ease with the rhetoric <strong>of</strong> civil society<br />
participation but suspicious and unsure exactly how to do it. The heady<br />
early days <strong>of</strong> reform are over, but the roles <strong>of</strong> district government and local<br />
people <strong>in</strong> the forest rema<strong>in</strong> as opaque as ever, and struggles for control <strong>of</strong><br />
the forest cont<strong>in</strong>ue.<br />
Mal<strong>in</strong>au research forest<br />
In 1996, the M<strong>in</strong>istry <strong>of</strong> Forestry <strong>in</strong> Indonesia granted the Center for<br />
International Forestry Research (CIFOR) rights to conduct long-term<br />
research <strong>in</strong> a 321,000-ha area established as the Bulungan Research<br />
Forest 8 . CIFOR has the general mandate to conduct research for the public<br />
good that will improve the susta<strong>in</strong>ability <strong>of</strong> <strong>forests</strong> to help alleviate poverty.<br />
Under that mandate, CIFOR’s objective <strong>in</strong> the research forest is to test more<br />
<strong>in</strong>tegrated approaches to manag<strong>in</strong>g large forest landscapes. The research<br />
projects have thus focused on how to reduce the impact <strong>of</strong> logg<strong>in</strong>g, improve<br />
the access <strong>of</strong> communities to forest benefits <strong>in</strong> the Mal<strong>in</strong>au watershed and<br />
develop more <strong>in</strong>tegrated land-use plans and decision mak<strong>in</strong>g. Research on<br />
how communities value biodiversity, their economic dependence on <strong>forests</strong><br />
and how <strong>community</strong> participation <strong>in</strong> local government decisions can be<br />
enhanced supported these goals. The program <strong>of</strong> work described <strong>in</strong> this<br />
chapter constitutes just one subgroup <strong>of</strong> all the activities <strong>in</strong> the research<br />
forest. The authors <strong>of</strong> this report were part <strong>of</strong> a larger program at CIFOR<br />
called <strong>Adaptive</strong> Collaborative Management (ACM), and we referred to<br />
ourselves as the ACM-Mal<strong>in</strong>au team. Our activities <strong>in</strong> Mal<strong>in</strong>au predated<br />
the other studies <strong>in</strong> this volume and so were organised with different