Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 5: Muddling Towards Cooperation in Malinau • 143
Because information was a scarce resource, we also disseminated policy
information through informal discussions, policy info-briefs, newsletters,
sharing of the regulations and laws, training courses in legal drafting,
workshops and cross-visits. Cross-visits were always popular and highly
effective for participants. For example, to facilitate learning across regions,
we supported visits of government officials and villagers from Malinau
to other districts, such as Jambi, Sumatra, to learn about the election of
village representatives to the village council (Badan Perwakilan Desa), the
establishment of customary forests and the use of public lands and forests
as sources of village revenue. The informal discussions of participants with
their hosts in the village probably had the greatest impact on participants’
thinking.
One lesson learnt in this cycle was that the most powerful agencies of
strategic importance to communities’ interests were often not interested
in collaborating with us, while those that were less strategic or weaker
politically were 12 . Working with the weaker parties had the advantage that
cooperation was easier because they needed us and strengthening this
agency might improve their status. However, our impact on government is
limited when we work with these more marginalised groups.
4. Community participation in district land-use planning
In 2001 we also began to promote principles of cooperation while facilitating
linkages between village and the local district government in land-use
planning. The new district was required to make a land-use plan (rencana
tata ruang). We viewed this as an opportunity to facilitate more collegial
working relations between government and local communities. In the
jargon of multistakeholder processes (Hemmati 2002), we saw this also as
a possible platform on which groups could develop a joint strategy (Röling
and Jiggins 1998; Castellanet and Jordan 2002) and as a way to deepen our
understanding of how to empower disadvantaged groups (i.e., villages) in
stakeholder collaboration.
We thus began a cycle of activities to develop better linkages between village
and kabupaten-level land-use decision making. Although, at the request of
the donor, we established a formal memorandum of understanding, plan of
work, steering committee and implementation committee with the district,
we quickly recognised that these groups operated in too rigid a fashion
and prevented the development of ideas and open discussion. During this