Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

150 • Eva Wollenberg, Ramses Iwan, Godwin Limberg, Moira Moeliono, Steve Rhee and Made Sudana
We found that small but incrementally significant achievements often
occurred because of fortuitous circumstances, such as a chance meeting
with an influential person, a coincidence of interests among key actors, an
unexpected event providing an opportunity for influence. These coincidences
became as important to achieving our objectives as our purposeful activities.
We learned to increase the possibility for these opportunities by becoming
more aware of and monitoring changes in the following factors that were
the key determinants of spontaneous cooperation in Malinau:
• the ‘gatekeepers’ (the people with authority, influence and control)
and the ‘movers and shakers’ (those who could short-cut the
bureaucracy and get things done, such as the district leader, agency
heads and village leaders);
• the timing of routine and ad hoc gatherings and events; and
• the interests that motivated different groups to participate in
different events.
In addition, we learned to work with this spontaneous cooperation in three
ways.
Being physically present and interactive. Just by being around we
increased the opportunities for (1) informal meetings with gatekeepers,
which tended to be more effective than structured formal meetings; (2)
relationship building with a wide network of people, especially the support
network of the gatekeepers (see below) to gain knowledge informally and
build mutual trust; and (3) other people to come to us with information
they thought we needed to know, including invitations to events, news
of sudden schedule changes, their understanding of hidden motives or an
alternative interpretation of an issue.
Working informally with the support network of the gatekeepers. The
gatekeepers themselves were often too busy to interact with us very much,
but their support network—the people whom advised or influenced the
gatekeepers—knew and organised schedules and had the latest inside
information about decisions.
Maintaining hyperflexibility in our schedule and resources. We learned to be
ready to reschedule our own events and reallocate staff at the last minute to
attend events, as well as routinely adjust our strategy. An important way in
which maintained flexibility was to reduce our dependence on gatekeepers.
Although this flexibility led to some significant gains, maintaining it was
the most difficult, costly and frustrating aspect of facilitation. It required