Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

144 • Eva Wollenberg, Ramses Iwan, Godwin Limberg, Moira Moeliono, Steve Rhee and Made Sudana
phase we began to recognise the value of more personalised contacts and
informal corridor discussions.
We helped villagers to analyse and articulate their priorities for village
land use and provided them training in negotiation, proposal making and
conflict management. During our monitoring, we found that few villagers
were aware that the district was developing a land-use plan. Although we
tried to facilitate villager input into the government’s land-use planning
process, all formal efforts failed. We focused instead on facilitating
exchanges between villagers and district officials in community meetings.
We also gave local governments discussion materials about participation
and public consultation.
In mid-2002 we evaluated our progress and concluded that, given the
incipient nature of reforms, improved citizen participation in government
land-use planning was a long-term prospect. Facilitating formal input
from communities faced too many institutional obstacles to be effectively
achieved in the short run, reinforcing our earlier observation about the
weak institutional setting. District officials lacked information and
confidence about how to be transparent and involve local people in a
meaningful way. Ingrained habits and attitudes continued to shape how
government interacted with communities. Officials felt nervous about
public consultations and were most comfortable where they could deliver
predetermined decisions. The difficulties of coordination within the district
government and the huge transportation and communication costs of
sharing information with remote villages made it difficult for the district to
fulfill even minimal legal requirements of public involvement.
From the communities’ perspective, most villagers wanted to participate
more in district decisions but lacked information about how to do so. Many
village leaders were proactive in approaching district officials, but most
villagers lacked confidence to do this and at the most attended only those
meetings to which they were invited in a local village. Local leaders often
viewed increased access to district officials as an opportunity to negotiate
projects or money for themselves and their village but usually did not have
the legal information with which to justify their demands.
More interestingly, during this period we observed that the biggest gains in
community influence were occurring through increased casual contact and
informal relationships between local people and officials.