Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

24 • Ravi Prabhu, Cynthia McDougall and Robert Fisher
resource management to elucidate causal forces of innovation and emergent
phenomena in complex adaptive systems involving human agency.
Three phases of adaptive collaborative management
An adaptive collaborative management approach cannot be captured in a
series of steps or a prescription. However, practitioners can design contextspecific
processes around the three anchors and the seven guideposts
listed above. In deconstructing the approach for the purpose of conceptual
understanding—that is, exploring ACM as a model relating to innovation
in a complex human system—we illustrate an ACM approach as three broad
phases. Because of the cyclical nature of the approach and the long-term
nature of forest management, these phases are enmeshed with one another,
and once each phase begins, it continues in parallel, and intertwined, with
the other phases. Because of this circularity there is no single beginning
point or easily defined end. For the purpose of this discussion, we explore
the phases in an order that reflects, in general terms, the flow of processes
during the participatory action research component of the CIFOR
and partners’ ACM project. We begin by describing a phase centred on
processes of communication aimed at reaching shared understanding. The
second phase is dominated by the development of human relationships and
networks around the management of the resources, and it continues into a
third phase dominated by actions that have material consequences (Figure
2-1).
In selecting and defining the three phases in this manner, we follow
Habermas (1981) and the three forms of action he identifies:
1. Communicative action aimed at the generation of understanding
or meaning;
2. Strategic action aimed at dealing with relationships or ‘form’; and
3. Instrumental (or material) action that takes place in the external
world and affects matter.