Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

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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.
Chapter 7: Discussion and Conclusions • 221 Box 7-2. Steps in adaptive collaborative management The process of adaptive collaborative management can be described as a series of interrelated steps on a spiral of learning and improvement. These steps, however, are not necessarily to be taken consecutively. Steps 1 through 4 (especially 4) are followed when initiating the approach but then rechecked throughout the process and adjusted accordingly. And because the steps describe a spiral, practitioners loop through them, adjusting their understanding, plans and actions as they progress. The following is an example of the steps taken in an ACM approach: 1. Understanding who is involved and who should be involved and creating collective agreement to work together. 2. Understanding the system, its components and its feedback loops, and identifying uncertainties and gaps in understanding. 3. Understanding and reviewing the history of governance, management, presuppositions (i.e., paradigms and assumptions) and outcomes and lessons from the past. 4. Working to develop attitudes, norms, structures and processes that enable all actors to engage equitably and contribute effectively. 5. Identifying a common future vision and setting shared goals. 6. Considering options, keeping in mind the system and the uncertainties. 7. Selecting the best alternative—for that moment in time—and developing a plan for this alternative that takes into account the uncertainties (e.g., including plans to fill in or test knowledge gaps). 8. Accepting that the plan may not work as anticipated and therefore setting up strategies for observing its intended and unintended effects (i.e., a monitoring system). 9. Implementing the plan. 10. Observing the effects (i.e., monitoring). 11. Reflecting, as a group, on the effects and changes to the system; sharing insights and knowledge and if necessary calling on additional outside knowledge and skills; and reviewing perceptions, assumptions and understanding. 12. Adjusting the plan if necessary. We offer that list with the reminder that the steps are an illustration only. ACM is not a recipe or prescription, and if the steps are misinterpreted, the essential elements of working collectively to learn and improve could be lost. Supporting the emergence of an ACM approach is a process of action learning that allows for local adaptation and ownership.
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Adaptive Collaborative Management o
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Copyright © 2007 by Center for Int
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iv • Contents Chapter 5. Muddling
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vi • Foreword problem solving. Th
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viii • About the Contributors God
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Acknowledgements In early 1999, two
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Chapter 1. Introduction: People, Fo
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Chapter 1: Introduction: People, Fo
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Chapter 2: Adaptive Collaborative M
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Chapter 3: Adaptiveness and Collabo
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Chapter 4. Shaping Opportunities fo
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Chapter 4: Improving Forest Quality
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