Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

66 • Cynthia McDougall, Hemant Ojha, Raj Kumar Pandey, Mani Ram Banjade and Bishnu Hari Pandit
Strengthening community forestry practices through an adaptive
collaborative management approach
The focus of the participatory action research was the effort of the CFUG
Committee and general members, ACM researchers and other CFUG
supporters, such as the Federation of Community Forest User Groups Nepal
(FECOFUN) and district forest office staff, to enhance the effectiveness of
the CFUGs’ annual (and ongoing) planning process and ongoing practices
as a means of improving social and environmental outcomes. Specifically,
they were trying to shift away from centralised, top-down and relatively
linear and/or ad hoc management processes to a more inclusive approach
based on increased reflection and collective deliberation. There was no
one model for these innovations and efforts to strengthen; the facilitators
simply tried to catalyse and support cycles of planning, action, learning and
innovation that were rooted in increased adaptiveness and collaboration,
with an emphasis on self-monitoring and joint reflections. These changes
were driven by the cultivation of certain attitudes and skills towards key
aspects of ACM: reflection, flexibility in action cycles, and incorporating
shared learning into decision-making. We elaborate further on each of
these below.
Structures that support enhanced deliberation in decision-making
In this subsection we highlight four main innovative or strengthened
patterns and arrangements of interaction that emerged during the PAR
and enhanced relations amongst actors in the practice of forest governance
at CFUG level.
Building and bridging voices: active tole committees as a mechanism to
enhance input to decision making and information flow. The tole (hamlet)
has been recognised—in principle—by community forestry policy theorists
and practitioners as important for engaging community members—for
example, through the use of tole meetings in the CFUG formation process.
And yet, as noted above, in practice toles are often underutilised or even
inactive in ongoing governance. Thus, although the recognition and use of
this level in community forestry is not new, its ongoing active engagement
as the first ‘nested’ layer of (learning-based) governance was an area of
innovation by the CFUGs involved in the participatory action research.