Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 1: Introduction: People, Forests and the Need for Adaptation • 5
human beings. Whereas systems management involves management of
complex interactions by actors with differing, even opposing objectives,
what is called for is decision-making based on negotiation around these
differing objectives. Linear thinking based on supposedly clear objectives
doesn’t work 1 because real-world forest management involves soft systems,
with competing societal objectives. Collaboration becomes essential.
In recent years, an enormous amount of literature has been produced
on the broad subject of collaboration in natural resource management.
Collaborative management of protected areas has been one major area
of concern (Borrini-Feyerabend 1997); collaborative management of
forests has been another (Fisher 1995). Associated with this research is
work on pluralist approaches to natural resources management in general,
and forest management in particular (Anderson et al. 1998). There are
differing views on who should be involved in collaborative arrangements
for forest management. One view holds that the main partners should
be local communities (however defined) and the state authorities legally
responsible for forests. In Asia these forest authorities usually have legal
authority over most forests, despite the traditional claims of the people who
live in and near forests. This type of collaborative management is reflected
in the Indian model of joint forest management and the approaches to
community forestry evident in forest management programmes in Nepal
and the Philippines.
Increasingly, such community-based approaches are being seen as too
narrow and it is recognised that the constituencies interested in forest
management are more diverse. Stakeholders may include both nonlocal
groups with direct economic interests in forests (such as logging companies
and nontimber forest products merchants) and those with less immediate
interests, such as conservationists and the wider population that depends
on forests’ environmental services (clean air and water). Although multiple
interests are fundamental to contemporary forest management, there are
good reasons for concern that calls for pluralism and the national interest
can become excuses for disempowering marginalised stakeholders, including
local communities whose rights have long been ignored (Fisher 2003a).
Perversely, calls for pluralism risk reinforcing (or in some cases, returning
to) the status quo, in which forests are controlled by state authorities and
powerful economic interests.
Calls for pluralist forest management have raised questions about the need
to develop processes and fora that permit stakeholder negotiation and, at