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82 • Cynthia McDougall, Hemant Ojha, Raj Kumar Pandey, Mani Ram Banjade and Bishnu Hari Pandit Box 3-6. Recognition of marginalised users’ forest rights. Before the ACM project, the Deurali-Bagedanda CFUG rules were such that members of the low-caste Biswakarma ethnic group were forced to go to distant areas of the community forest to collect firewood. Members of the CFUG from other caste groups collected firewood from areas much closer to the settlements. During the course of the ACM project, the Biswakarma users expressed the position in committee meetings and the CFUG general assembly that they had the same use rights and that all users, no matter who they were, should harvest firewood from the same site of the community forest based on the ‘block system’ as described in the CFUG’s operational plan. Researchers noted that CFUG members of other caste groups began to express that the current allocation system was biased and unjust. As a result, the ‘block system’, in which users of all castes harvest from the same forest area, was approved in the 2002 general assembly. (Kaski ACM Team 2002) We suggest that one primary reason for the positive direction of change in access to forest products is that by being inclusive and iterative, ACM processes focused more on-going attention on equity in access to forest products and to income generation. The more that CFUG members, including marginalised ones, engaged in overall planning and decisionmaking through processes such as self-monitoring, the greater their awareness and confidence regarding their rights and ability to challenge the dominant actors in their CFUG. The explicit and iterative nature of the ACM visioning and planning processes meant that issues of equity were publicly put on the CFUG’s agenda and kept alive as the group revisited them in self-monitoring and other reflection processes. The attention paid to equity of entitlements is a critical balancing force to forest protection and income generation in CFUG planning and decision making (Box 3-7). Box 3-7. Attention to equity in forest protection rules In Bambdibhir CFUG, self-monitoring and other ACM processes appeared to motivate increased restrictions on fuelwood and reduced access for some users. Had there been no ‘equity’ feedback loop, this may have led to negative outcomes regarding livelihoods. But, because the monitoring of forest conditions went handin-hand with increased access to decision making, this issue was raised by the concerned toles. The CFUG then decided to use its ‘heterogeneity analysis tool’ to develop a new system. In the new system, ‘needy persons’ collected firewood on a monthly ‘open day’ and began taking part in pruning activities so that get more firewood from the forest and also have more input to decision making. The CFUG committee has given the tole committees full responsibility for determining the real firewood requirements of each household and the degree of their dependency on the forest versus other sources to meet their firewood needs. Because of the equity feedback loop, people’s livelihood concerns are being addressed.
Chapter 3: Adaptiveness and Collaboration in Community Forestry in Nepal • 83 Reflections: challenges, insights and preliminary lessons The positive changes in forest governance and management practices observed in the four CFUGs during the first phase of the research project (1999–2002) suggest that an adaptive collaborative management approach could add significant value to community forestry in Nepal. The transaction cost identified--time cost increases--appear to be acceptable to CFUG members. The surfacing of latent conflicts was ultimately positive, and potential increases in protectionism were offset through the feedback loops on equity. At the same time, challenges remain. The first is that a successful ACM approach, and positive outcomes from it, relies on the ability of forest users and other actors to be critically reflective upon their own attitudes and capacities and their resulting behaviours and governance and management practices. Furthermore, they need to be able to respond to this learning by, for example, shifting attitudes or behaviours or policies identified as unconstructive. Thus, having ‘structural’ and even process aspects of an ACM approach in place, such as tole divisions and self-monitoring, is not a sufficient basis for a CFUG to function optimally; intangible elements, such as attitudes, must drive the approach. The Manakamana CFUG was a case in point. This CFUG had tole divisions and, briefly, a form of (nonlearningbased) monitoring prior to the ACM research project, but these were essentially inactive and/or ineffective. It took the development of a greater understanding of, and interest in, learning and inclusive management to bring about some meaningful shifts in governance in that CFUG. The key insight regarding this challenge is that the critical reflection, and the related collaboration and learning-oriented attitudes, capacities and behaviours, do not need to be in place prior to starting an ACM approach; they can be generated by it. Specifically, the process of mindfully engaging in an ACM approach—with effective facilitation—appears to provide ‘breaks’ in thinking that occur through shared critical reflection on patterns of perception and behaviour. This reflection is based on the CFUGs’ own experiences and processes and is sparked through collaborative interface with facilitators or other actors, such as members’ social networks. This interface, as experienced in the research project, can introduce different worldviews, outside perspectives on a situation, and critical questions or observations. The interface may reveal latent conflicts or power imbalances that need to be addressed for the CFUG to progress in its desired direction.
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Copyright © 2007 by Center for Int
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iv • Contents Chapter 5. Muddling
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vi • Foreword problem solving. Th
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viii • About the Contributors God
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Acknowledgements In early 1999, two
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Chapter 1. Introduction: People, Fo
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Chapter 1: Introduction: People, Fo
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Chapter 4: Improving Forest Quality
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Chapter 5: Muddling Towards Coopera
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Chapter 6: Facilitating Change from
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Chapter 7: Discussion and Conclusio
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CIFOR is a leading international fo
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