Tag: community forestry

Mukasa et al. continue in Chapter 5 with the ACM programme that was conducted in Uganda, but these authors focus instead on the process of ACM, the specific attempts the community members undertook with the team’s facilitation and the impacts at that time. The authors have also been able to revisit these sites more recently and provide up-to-date assessments of the longevity of many, though not all, of their efforts. A number of the communities’ concerns have significance for the global restoration efforts now underway – efforts that frequently inadequately attend to the needs, interests and capabilities of local people. The experience of this ACM team should be directly applicable to many such programmes.

Bomuhangi et al. have accomplished something many ACM practitioners and researchers have wanted, but been unable, to do: They have compared forest use and management in eight purposively sampled places around Uganda, looking at three important issues. The first is clarity about the various uses to which these communities put forests. The second is the differentiation by gender in terms of use, management, and benefits. In this regard, the authors show the greater involvement of women in ACM sites, vis a vis where ACM was not conducted. The third is a systematic comparison of a variety of results in ACM vs. non-ACM sites. These include issues like level and quality of participation, perceived abundance of forest resources, harvest of forest products, and use thereof. The authors conclude by recommending the broader use of ACM-like approaches throughout Uganda’s forested areas, in collaboration with government, NGOs, and private landowners.

Here, we move from the very grounded, synthetic Latin American farmer participants’ experience of action research in Chapter 2 to that of researchers collaborating within an agricultural development project designed to use participatory action research (PAR). Mutimukuru-Maravanyika and her co-authors reflexively examine their own experience of carrying out PAR within a complex institutional framework, spanning divergent countries, disciplines, cultures and research organizations.

The authors make clear the steps involved in conducting PAR correctly. This is valuable because, within the development and conservation worlds, there is a great deal of very superficial effort that is labelled “participatory” but does not meet the standards we feel are needed – standards that are made clear in this story. This is also valuable in laying the groundwork for the analyses to follow, providing a common understanding of what is being discussed (ACM/PAR), an understanding that might not otherwise exist (see Chapter 3 or Colfer et al. 2011).

This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part aims to emphasize the importance of paying serious attention to understanding a context before diving into an adaptive collaborative management (ACM)-like process. It discusses the value of ethnographic approaches for gaining such understanding. The part presents a focus on a more personal writing style, documenting the experience of the authors over the past three to four decades with the different iterations and manifestations of action research, participatory action research and adaptive collaborative management. It describes the imprecise differentiation among action research, participatory action research and ACM as reflecting similarities in the three approaches.

This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part describes a theoretical lens to their own long-term engagement in Nepal’s community forestry to highlight mechanisms underlying the positive shifts in power in that adaptive collaborative management (ACM) case. It looks at three concepts that help to unpack and explain power imbalances: culturally rooted social and gender identities; dominant beliefs that are internalized and thus taken-for-granted and unnoticed; and political representation. The book discusses the interplay between structure and agency, an interface that can offer clues to how and when ACM can contribute to changing power relations. It argues that employing the processes in theoretically grounded ways can greatly enhance ACM’s effectiveness in empowerment.

Sarmiento Barletti’s introduction of a tool for use in multi-stakeholder forums (MSFs) follows on naturally from Chapter 6, which looked at the evolution of MSFs within ACM efforts (in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ghana). Sarmiento Barletti, whose ACM research began later than most contributors, initially reports the findings of a realist synthesis review of the MSF literature, thereby establishing some key parameters that affect the success or failure of an MSF.

This chapter focuses on the importance of providing training – training of local participants but also the external facilitators who will work with the community – in how to conduct adaptive collaborative management (ACM). It discusses the degree to which ACM approaches fundamentally differ from much of the training many fieldworkers have received for more conventional field research or extension, and it differs from villagers’ more typical experience with outside “developers” or conservationists. The chapter deals with specific suggestions for enhancing ACM processes, including encouraging would-be practitioners to “jump into the ACM process and embrace an ethos of experimentation, trial-and-error and learning-by-doing.” Real understanding tends to come as practitioners implement the iterations of “the worm” and the learning that results.

As we move from Chapter 9, which focused on the varying iterations and uses of approaches like ACM, PAR and AR, we return to their use in the ACM programme generally. PAR was used as a tool to encourage the development of (or strengthen existing) adaptive collaborative management, primarily in communities, although with tentacles reaching up and out to other levels as needed.