Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

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226 • Cynthia McDougall, Ravi Prabhu and Robert Fisher Our basic hypothesis in this research—as outlined in Chapter 1—was that the provision of opportunities for collaborative learning, negotiation and planning could contribute to better management of complexity and better negotiation amongst people with differing and competing objectives for forest management. Based on the research presented in these pages, an adaptive collaborative management approach does offer a viable approach for enhancing the quality of governance in the complex conditions of community-based forestry. Although the trends look promising, the short duration of the research and the myriad confounding factors recommend that we be cautiously rather than strongly optimistic about ACM’s ability to enhance livelihoods for local people and achieve more equitable governance and sustainable outcomes. This brings us back to one of the reasons for wanting to share the learning from the research: community forestry can be seen as a microcosm of global environmental management. Just as forest-dependent people face the challenges of increasingly limited resources, a growing multitude of resource users, and dynamic natural systems, so too do nations and in fact the entire global community. Diverse human systems are intertwined with—and dependent on—each other and these natural systems. In the years since the research began, it has become increasingly clear that although rigid, linear approaches may be more readily managed by bureaucracies and top-down policy frameworks, they cannot help rural communities achieve resilience and well-being. It is time to move on from policies and practices developed under paradigms of environmental control and ‘consequence-free’ action. Just as the communities in this research have struggled to build their own resilience, the global community needs to build its own collective resilience through more humble, learning-based and flexible approaches that draw on diverse and collective wisdom. Endnotes 1 The reason for the difference between the Malinau initiative (Chap 5) and the rest of the case studies: began earlier than the other three cases and was not part of the ADB funded ACM project. As pointed out in Chapter 5, the project ‘sought to empower local communities to increase their access and control over forest benefits and decisions’ through ‘stimulating cooperation among stakeholders’. Unlike the other three projects it did not aim to test ACM approaches to assess their effectiveness. 2 In this context ‘meso-level’ Signifies levels of governance between the ‘local’ or community level, where primary users and managers of forests are active, and the national level where broad policy and legislation are developed and regulated.
Chapter 7: Discussion and Conclusions • 227 3 The Malinau case is different from the other three case studies not only because it is part of a longer term research program, one that arose out of a commitment by CIFOR to the Indonesian government to carry out research in the Bulungan Research Forest, it was different also because of the size of the research team—over five individuals, as opposed to one or two at the other sites—the nature of agency exercised by that researcher team as compared to the other ACM teams. 4 In the Palawan case, the ACM processes involved the PO interacting and networking beyond the local and city levels, and up to the provincial level, which also increased their capacity to influence policy (e.g. policy on forest charges/fees). 5 We note that while the majority of local people involved expressed satisfaction with the redistribution of power in decision-making that was emerging in most of the sites, some traditional power holders in the communities were less satisfied because this implied a loss of privilege. In a number of cases (but not all), these individuals’ attitudes also appeared to shift somewhat over the course of the research. 6 These included, for example, self-monitoring, or small group reflection (such as in Nepal an investigation group on causes of previous failure of bamboo seedlings), and the implementation of various activities such as trials and experiments (for example, broomgrass and bamboo trials). 7 While this is positive for forests (and potentially long-term for livelihoods) this also carries the risk that increased awareness of poor forest condition may lead to increasingly protectionist regulations, which could bring hardship to marginalised groups if plans are not included to mitigate these risks; reinforcing the need for the monitoring-based planning to take place in a forum in which all groups, including marginalised ones, can effectively influence decisions, and potentially harmful equity-related outcomes can be anticipated and addressed (McDougall et al. 2002). References Gilmour, D. 2002 The future of collaborative management of forests in Asia. In: CIFOR ACM Team 2002 Adaptive collaborative management of community forests: An option for Asia? Proceedings of Asia Region Workshop on ACM (unpublished), Bangkok, 26-27 September, FAO-CIFOR-ADB. McDougall, C., Kaski ACM Team, New ERA ACM Team and Forest Action. 2002 Planning for the sustainability of forests through adaptive co-management: Nepal country report. ACM Project/ MoFSC Internal Research Report. CIFOR, Bogor.
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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 2: Adaptive Collaborative M
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Chapter 4: Improving Forest Quality
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