Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

220 • Cynthia McDougall, Ravi Prabhu and Robert Fisher
A second essential element of the ACM approach is collaboration. In
the Philippines, Nepal, and Jambi and Pasir, collaboration meant learning
together. The actors were different in each case but always brought diverse
perspectives and, for the most part, tensions. In the Nepal case particularly,
collaboration also meant inclusive decision making—working with
marginalised people. Finally, in these three cases, collaboration involved
action with other stakeholders (including resisting or challenging other
stakeholders as appropriate). In the chaotic and highly fractured context of
Malinau, the researchers determined that their aim should be not structured
collaboration but ‘spontaneous orders of cooperation’. Their conscious
emphasis on being open to sudden opportunities for cooperation amongst
stakeholders, they believe, enabled them to facilitate more cooperation
than they could have achieved with any formal platform or agenda.
In promoting learning and collaboration, one lesson learnt by all teams
and articulated in the Malinau chapter is that facilitation is not neutral.
Facilitation can spark critical reflection and connections amongst actors
and find windows of opportunity for addressing conflicts and power
imbalances. But in the Nepal cases, for example, the facilitators were
consciously working constantly to create space—and power—for low-caste
people in a system that traditionally excludes and marginalises them.
In sum, the adaptive collaborative management approach seeks to develop
and support collaboration, communication, conscious social learning
and adaptation. Implementation requires not only identifying actors
but also bridging their diverse mental models and needs and addressing
latent conflict. It calls for developing and maintaining governance and
management as cycles of action and shared reflection and learning. It
requires collaborative monitoring and consciously adjusting understandings
and actions. And it calls for flexibility in planning and implementation:
those involved must be willing challenge their own assumptions and be
prepared to learn and change.
As the project progressed, shared learning and collaboration emerged in
different forms and to different degrees. Box 7-2 is an example of the flow
of interrelated steps and processes, based on a combination of the cases.