Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 2: Adaptive Collaborative Management: A Conceptual Model • 31
in advance to predicting and possibly correcting those disruptions in the
system that might affect the outcome. Thus communication in an ACM
approach focuses on clarifying and bridging stakeholders’ perspectives, using
an adaptive management cycle (i.e., planning, implementing, observing,
reflecting and adapting), promoting collaboration to link fragmented
knowledge, and collaborative self-monitoring to deal with the demands of
both feedforward and feedback.
Phase 2. Strategic action: self-organisation
Strategic action sets the stage for ‘material’ action in phase 3. In other
words, this phase makes it possible for an ACM process to create substantive
outcomes relating to natural resources or other forms of capital 4 . The
nature or quality of this potential is defined by the space—let us call it
‘self-organisation’—formed by the triangular intersection of the following
three processes:
• the emergence of communities of practice;
• the creation and maintenance of connectivity; and
• the nature and structures of social learning that these communities
undertake.
Phase 3:
Material or Instrumental Action
Empowerment through
self-organization
Collaboration
& connectivity
Emergence of
communities of practice
Ph. 2 space =
‘Self-organization’
Strategic action predominates
Empowerment through
meaning or purpose
Social learning
Phase 1:
Communicative
Action
Communicative action predominates
Figure 2-3. Phase 2: strategic action