Action and learning: an approach for facilitating a change in knowledge and power relationship in community forestry

Though forestry issues have been associated with wider socioeconomic, environmental and political concerns, the knowledge and power dynamics embedded in the process of its management has largely been ignored. The knowledge, tools and techniques that we have been applying in the past have not been useful to the extent of favouring the poor and the marginalized section of community. There seemed to be a lack of effort for systematic learning to reflect and change the unequal relationships among stakeholders of resource management. This paper describes the action learning approach, which was implemented in a Community Forest User Group (CFUG) in the Terai region of Nepal. Drawing lessons from the empirical evidences, it is concluded that action learning can be an approach to change the status quo and the knowledge dynamics in CFUG by developing leadership and raising the critical awareness among the users, particularly the poor and marginalized.