Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 2: Adaptive Collaborative Management: A Conceptual Model • 45
have done so by drawing on a range of well-established theory. At this
stage, however, we move from theory to practice. We believe that both
the cogency and the plausibility of the model are underscored by the rich
insights provided by the participatory action research that took place in
the CIFOR and partners’ ACM research project. In the next four chapters,
research team members from Indonesia, Nepal and the Philippines share
their experiences and lessons from research in adaptive collaborative
management. In doing so, they illustrate that learning closes the link in the
chain to successful adaptation—from mental models, through disturbance,
communication, connectivity and communities of practice. Sriskandarajah
et al. (1991) suggest that instead of viewing sustainability as an externally
designed goal to be achieved, it is more appropriately a measure of the
relationship between a community as learners and their environments. We
suggest that this is an appropriate insight to frame these chapters.
Endnotes
1 The social learning referred to here has multiple facets. The learning is not
only individual but also shared; there is the cocreation of understanding and knowledge;
and forest managers are constantly increasing their understanding, knowledge and
skills. Social learning also includes the notion that there are several kinds of ‘learning
loops’ in action. That is, the forest manager may be learning about a specific aspect
of forests, studying cause and effect relationships between a management activity and
the forest or social outcome (thus learning about systems), and/or learning how to
learn and manage more effectively (see Maarleveld and Danbegnon 1999; see the next
section for more about social learning).
2 Examples of uncertainty include information that can be obtained somewhere
else or from someone else, knowledge that has yet to be generated, and information that
can only be speculated about, such as market prices, future demand for a product, the
likelihood of drought, or the relationship between certain species and environmental
functions.
3 The model does not suggest the imposition of change, however. It begins by
accepting local people’s goals and motivations as their own, to have and to change of
their own accord, just as the goals and motivations of external agents are theirs to own
and to change.
4 The livelihoods framework (see Carney et al. 1999) used by the UK
Department for International Development (DFID) identifies five kinds of capital that
support livelihoods. These are natural capital (such as forests or fisheries), financial
capital, physical capital (infrastructure), human capital (knowledge and skills) and
social capital (such as social organisations or social networks). Any reference to
various forms of capital in this book follows this usage.
5 Several authors have explored the characteristics of successful institutions
of common property management with respect to resources such as forests. This