Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Foreword
The easy ‘solutions’ offered by centralised resource
management no longer work, and the era of top-down decision making
is all but over. Some of the new directions that have been proposed include
learning-based approaches in place of set management prescriptions,
using a broader range of knowledge (including local and indigenous
knowledge), dealing with uncertainty and complexity, and of course the
sharing of management power and responsibility. Resource management
has become not a search for the optimal solution but an ongoing learning
and collaboration process for shared problem solving.
Adaptive management is a way of dealing with uncertainty and complexity;
collaborative management is about sharing management power and
responsibility. Adaptive management and collaborative management
have been evolving towards a common ground. Adaptive management,
without user collaboration, would become a sterile technocratic process;
collaborative management, without a learning loop, eventually withers.
In our recent book, Adaptive Co-Management: Collaboration, Learning and
Multi-Level Governance (University of British Columbia Press, 2007), we
found that time-tested collaborative management necessarily becomes
adaptive collaborative management, not only in forestry but in a diversity
of resource management areas.
For forest-dependent peoples of Southeast Asia and elsewhere, making a
living in a rapidly changing, globalised world requires continual learning,
adaptation and collaboration. Managing forests in a rapidly changing
world also requires a process of deliberate social learning and collaborative