Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 3: Adaptiveness and Collaboration in Community Forestry in Nepal • 77
were rooted in social learning processes and experiences and supported
by changes in CFUG structures, such as the development of toles and
action groups. More specifically, the processes of joint visioning and selfmonitoring,
including explicit discussion of equity, helped ‘push’ power
redistribution in decision making and equity in outcomes, and the tracking
of benefits by wealth groups helped make this concrete. As marginalised
users became increasingly aware of their rights and of the actual division of
rights and benefits in practice, they often became less willing to accept the
status quo. In some cases, explicit commitments to equity in the visioning
or goal setting or other planning processes could be used as leverage to hold
the decision makers accountable, and this—combined with marginalised
users’ rising levels of engagement, information and confidence—enabled
them to better challenge unequal power relations in the CFUG.
The main ‘pull’ towards shifts in attitude and power sharing 20 appeared
to be the realisation that more inclusive processes could have significant
positive outcomes. For example, in a number of cases, as more users
became involved, their sense of ownership as well as knowledge of CFUG
rules increased, and executive committee members realised that they were
facing fewer challenges (Box 3-4), as well as a lightened work load as toles
and action groups took on more responsibilities.
Box 3-4. Changing attitudes and practices in decision making and
conflict management
The chairperson of the Deurali-Bagedanda committee said, ‘When any
conflicting issues arises in the CFUG, we do not play the role of the Judge as
we used to do previously, instead we send the issues to the concerned toles
and the tole people themselves manage the case and come to the committee
with their resolution, and the conflicting issues no longer remain in the CFUG.
We came to know that people do not sometimes satisfy with the solutions
if they do not have the sufficient information of the rules, regulations and
the reality of the situations. After the ACM process, the community forest
management system has been more participatory, the committee does not
have any specific plans made only by its involvement, the community forestry
management plans or the management decisions that we have, are of the tole
people. Now, they have the information of the reality of the existing forest
conditions, availability of forest products … that they obtained the information
from the assessment of the indicators with the help of the moon phase self
monitoring tool. The stakeholders behave more friendly and become more
supportive to resolve the conflicts and to implement the actions … relating to
the community forestry management issues’. (Kaski ACM Team 2002: 7-106)