Forests of learning: Experiences from research on an Adaptive Collaborative Approach to community forestry in Nepal

Who should read this synthesis?

This synthesis is for policy actors and practitioners involved in community-based natural resource management in Nepal and around the world who are seeking to strengthen resource governance and management from the community level upwards to the national level. It will be of particular interest to those seeking to increase equity in, and enhance benefits from, resource management—especially for people who have been relatively marginalised from it.

What is this synthesis about?

This synthesis shares research-based lessons about the catalysation, practice and outcomes of an adaptive collaborative approach to community forestry in Nepal. It focuses on the community forest user group (CFUG) and meso levels, that is, the multistakeholder interface at the subdistrict and district levels. An adaptive collaborative approach is an approach to governance and management in which groups of actors intentionally use social learning as the basis for decision making, emphasise inclusion and equity in process and outcomes, and activate effective connections among actors and/or groups of actors (Fisher et al. 2007). In this publication we focus on the practical and conceptual links of an adaptive collaborative approach to equity and livelihoods, especially for marginalised people such as the poor, women and dalit people. More specifically, the synthesis shares CFUG- and meso-level lessons regarding:

• conditions under which an adaptive collaborative approach may be needed and factors that enable or inhibit it;
• strategies, processes and arrangements2 that support adaptive and collaborative capacity in community forest governance and management systems; and
• influences of such an approach, especially on quality of governance, generation of livelihood benefits, and distributional equity.

On what research is this publication based?

The lessons in this synthesis are drawn from multiyear, multilevel partnershipbased research into an adaptive collaborative approach to community forestry in Nepal initiated by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR). The research, which took place in two phases (1999–2002 and 2004–2007) is described in Chapter 2. Quotes from community forestry actors that appear in Chapters 5 and 6 were gathered during the research and translated from Nepali by research team members.

This synthesis is one of several outputs of the project. The sister publication to this synthesis is the guidebook entitled Facilitating Forests of Learning, which offers a practical framework and suggested steps for field-level practitioners who wish to implement the adaptive collaborative approach. This document also contributes to the International Union of Forest Research Organizations’ (IUFRO) Task Force on Improving the Lives of People and Forests and to the ongoing Adaptive Collaborative Management (ACM) Series (with related publications by CIFOR, Resources for the Future and Earthscan). For information on these and other outputs and related resources, readers should refer to Annex I.

Why was this synthesis written?

We have written this synthesis because the actors involved—including local people, meso-level practitioners, policy makers and researchers—generated lessons through the research that we believe are useful and timely. In particular, we believe they can support and further the direction that community forestry in Nepal—and community-based forest management worldwide—is moving: towards increasingly equitable, beneficial and sustainable resource governance.

We were spurred on to undertake this research for probably the same reason that others are venturing into related areas of research and innovation: concern for marginalisation of some forest users and what seemed to be less than optimal livelihood benefits from forests. In undertaking the research, and especially the participatory action research, the value of rooting governance and management at all levels in conscious reflection and shared learning emerged strongly as a pathway for positive change. What we—CFUG members, meso- and nationallevel actors, and researchers—discovered as we went was that this approach, while neither easy nor fast, does seem to trigger and enable increased group activity and effectiveness, enhanced inclusiveness, and greater equity. With this publication we want to share some of the key lessons learnt from our journey so that others may also benefit from them and incorporate them, as needed, into their own related journeys.