Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 2: Adaptive Collaborative Management: A Conceptual Model • 17
In this chapter we explore the ACM approach as conceptualised, observed,
facilitated and analysed by the research teams. The first section offers a brief
overview of the approach from the perspective of practice. Specifically, we
outline the guideposts that facilitators followed in catalysing ACM during
the participatory action research, and we give a brief example of an ACM
approach in action. The rest of the chapter is devoted to explaining, by way
of a model (Box 2-1), how an ACM approach functions from a conceptual
perspective. The model breaks down the approach into conceptual phases,
highlighting the purpose of each phase as well as its theoretical roots, and
then reintegrates the parts to illustrate the synergy of the phases in relation
to Holland’s question, posed above.
Box 2-1. Roles of models
Holland (1998) has suggested three roles for models: making correct predictions
about the world, rigorously demonstrating that something is possible, and
exploring and explaining, each of which is validated by the cogency and
relevance of the ideas it produces. We present our model of an ACM approach
in the sense of the third role: as a tool to explore and explain. Specifically, we
are exploring and explaining the factors and forces underpinning innovation
and emergence in the complex system of managed forests.
Overview of adaptive collaborative management
This section first outlines the three anchors of an ACM approach:
communication and creation of a vision, social learning and joint action. It
then describes those anchors’ constituent elements, which function as
guideposts for practitioners designing and facilitating context-specific
ACM processes.
As defined by the CIFOR and partner research teams, adaptive
collaborative management is an ‘engine’ for adaptation and innovation.
It is a quality-adding approach to forest management and governance,
whereby stakeholders—the people or groups who use, control or in some
way have interests in a forest—engage in a process of effective social
interaction in which they negotiate a vision for the forest. The actors
consciously undertake deliberate and shared learning in developing and
implementing their plans for their forests. In doing so, they jointly observe
and reflect on the outcomes of plans—especially the unexpected—and the