Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

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8 • Robert Fisher, Ravi Prabhu and Cynthia McDougall cycles of revised planning, action, observation and reflection (Kemmis and McTaggart 1988). Action research as an explicit methodology was originally developed by the social psychologist Kurt Lewin in the context of community projects in post–World War II United States (Lewin 1946). It has subsequently been applied in a wide variety of fields, including rural development, natural resources management (Fisher and Jackson 1999) and organisational change (Greenwood and Levin 1998). Collaboration and participation have sometimes been seen as defining characteristics of action research, with some authors specifically arguing that all action research must be participatory (Kemmis and McTaggart 1988). This is somewhat problematic. Although it is difficult to see how action research could occur without collaboration (at least in the reflection stage) among members of a core research group, it is quite possible that an action research process could occur without the active involvement of wider groups of stakeholders in the formal research itself. For this reason it seems desirable to differentiate between action research and participatory action research (Fisher 2003b). The ACM project relied on a mixture of PAR, action research and more conventional extractive and comparative research to deliver insights that would be useful and generalisable. PAR was introduced when groups were working on certain aspects of ACM, such as improving action planning or collaborative monitoring approaches (see Guijt 2007), or seeking to exploit an opportunity for income generation, conflict management or forest improvement. Action research 3 was generally used to promote, implement and test the application of ACM in forest management. More conventional research methods were used for context studies, historical timelines and comparisons of results across sites. How can we demonstrate the validity and credibility of our findings? How can we show that ACM interventions lead to changes in the lives of poor people or the forests they depend upon? We would argue that it is not possible to conclusively demonstrate any causal connection between an ACM process and an outcome. As Hume showed in the eighteenth century 4 , causality is a major challenge for science and philosophy. According to Hume, we can only intuit a causal connection because two events regularly occur close together in time. The challenge applies not only to qualitative research but also to quantitative research. Statistical correlation does not prove a causal relationship. Regardless of whether causality can ever be proven (a stillvexing philosophical question), we would argue that, to show that causal
Chapter 1: Introduction: People, Forests and the Need for Adaptation • 9 connections are plausible, it is necessary to suggest a mechanism or process by which two events can be connected. In other words, we need to establish plausible causal connections between ACM interventions and outcomes 5 . For example, if stakeholders consciously negotiated management objectives and agreed on actions, and if those actions subsequently occurred, the identifiable consequences could reasonably be assumed to be a result of the process. This cannot be absolutely certain, but is a reasonable conclusion. Box 1-1 Causality: An extract from the International Steering Committee (2000) report While there may be some scope for quantitative data collection and analysis in the project, most of the data collected will be qualitative, and often in the form of process documentation. As the project is intended to test and improve the application of the ACM process, such documentation is essential and there is no likely way that quantitative analysis can deal with the core issues. To some extent the team seems to be apologetic about this, and consequently seems to be trying to treat qualitative data as if it were quantitative. Assuming an adequate timeframe for meaningful change, quantitative (or ‘objective’) data may demonstrate that a change in forest condition or human well being has occurred. However, they cannot demonstrate the cause of this change. Indeed, there is no methodology that can demonstrate the causes of such change with certainty. The best that can be done is to apply something like the sort of analysis used by practitioners of historical sciences (such as palaeontology or history), who examine events in order to establish plausible causal connections. Selection of Project Sites Nepal, the Philippines and Indonesia were selected for the Adaptive Collaborative Management Research Project for several reasons. Both Nepal and the Philippines have long histories of efforts to promote management of forests by communities, and the experiences of both countries have been extensive and well documented. Devolution policies in these two countries were well established and implemented to various extents. Indonesia, in contrast, has centralised management of forests,
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Chapter 4. Shaping Opportunities fo
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Chapter 4: Improving Forest Quality
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Chapter 5: Muddling Towards Coopera
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Chapter 6: Facilitating Change from
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Chapter 7: Discussion and Conclusio
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