Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

28 • Ravi Prabhu, Cynthia McDougall and Robert Fisher
Kuhn (1970: 111) has underscored this view of perception with reference
to science in particular:
The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms
change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm,
scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places ... see new
and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places
they have looked before. Insofar as their only recourse to the world is
through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution
scientists are responding to a different world.
And Heisenberg (1971) sums it up when he notes that ‘what we observe
is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.’ The
notion of perception in science is significant here because stakeholders
using an ACM approach are carrying out a form of inquiry as a part of their
management process, and the eyes they use to view the world largely shape
the answers they find in it.
One important implication is the ACM model’s assumption that in seeking
improvements in forest resource systems, natural resource management
practitioners and researchers need to put human and social assets—rather
than only natural, physical or financial assets—at the centre. For instance,
there is recurring discussion about the carrying capacity a forest ecosystem
may have for humans and animals, often with references to the ‘empty
forest’ phenomenon in Africa, where excessive hunting pressure has all
but removed the mammalian fauna of the forest. If we turn this discussion
around and, rather than asking, ‘How many humans can the forest carry?’
instead ask, ‘How much forest are the human beings willing to carry?’ the
answer would likely be very different, and one would be more likely to
find the commitment of the local stakeholders. Thus addressing the mental
models and knowledge systems of the individuals and groups engaged in
community forest management is key to establishing a basis for change. It
is also a caution to actors—both professional researchers and ‘inquirers’ in
an ACM group—to remind themselves that all their interpretations are
filtered through their own assumptions, beliefs and mental models.
Communication. Communication is commonly understood as the process
by which information is transferred between individual human beings. In this
model, however, we take a more action- and goal-oriented understanding.
We explore communication from a cybernetics perspective.
To understand cybernetics, we begin with the Santiago theory of
cognition (Maturana and Varela 1987; Varela et al. 1991). In this theory,