Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

214 • Cynthia McDougall, Ravi Prabhu and Robert Fisher
improvements in access to (influence on) decision making by women and
marginalised forest users, in both representation and participation; more
explicit attention to equity in rules, regulations and distribution of resources;
significant increases in multidirectional information flows amongst users
and between forest users and other agencies 4 ; increases in transparency
and accountability and supporting mechanisms; development of increased
internal capacity to manage conflicts; and increased engagement of more
forest users and mechanisms for sharing leadership and ownership.
Changes in social and human capital
The most significant changes that resulted from adoption of an ACM
approach during the project period seem to be in human and social capital.
We consider these significant both because of the degree of change in the
sites and also because we perceive these forms of capital as essential building
blocks for other forms of capital, such as financial benefits from forests.
Prior to the participatory action research, social capital in all sites ranged
from low to medium. Researchers and local people agreed that the
limitations were restricting effective and equitable forest governance and
management. Changes noted in all three country sites included increased
trust and respect within groups of forest users, and between forest users
and other groups; increased collective action within the forest user groups
and between the groups and other stakeholders; and increased satisfaction
amongst nonelite community members with access to decision making,
training and other opportunities, and with the quality of decision-making
and planning processes 5 . One common factor in the building of social
capital was the increased willingness to cooperate. Addressing conflict
and power differences was a significant part of the ACM approach, both
directly and indirectly, through social learning, governance innovations
and active facilitation. Shifting power relations, however, is an extremely
challenging undertaking. An ACM approach in several cases created
space for negotiation, helped set the stage for more level engagement, and
gave marginalised people ‘levers’, but actual levelling of power cannot be
planned, forced or guaranteed, only encouraged.
The ACM approach tended to increase human capital in all sites because
it emphasised ongoing learning and capacity building by developing
skills in facilitation, leadership, participatory decision making and
planning processes, recordkeeping, and in some cases, funding-proposal