Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 4: Improving Forest Quality and Livelihoods in Indonesia • 97
Addressing divergent claims on forests
Participatory efforts have often assumed that local communities are
homogeneous, with component parts in agreement about how to use and
manage forests. However, in many forest communities socio-economic
stratification has been increasing (Li 1996), and most participatory forestry
efforts lack the instruments to accommodate the interests of disadvantaged
groups (such as women or hunter-gatherers) and for encouraging
collaboration at the local level.
Furthermore, decentralisation and increasing market forces have introduced
a wide array of stakeholders besides local people and public agencies and
have stimulated the emergence of local elites and alliances of powerful
actors who usurp local control over resources (Wollenberg et al. 2006). Most
participatory initiatives have not anticipated the changing relationships
among actors due to wider-scale political economic changes. Nor are they
equipped with the negotiating tools or other multiple-stakeholder strategies
to help interest groups cope with changing relations and associated power
plays. It is commonly thought that incompatible claims on forests can be
addressed without recognising power relationships. ‘Keeping politics in a
distance’ is the implicit motto of most participatory initiatives.
Addressing institutional inflexibility
Participatory government programs like Perhutanan Sosial (social forestry)
or Hutan Kemasyarakatan (community forestry) tend to be top-down,
target externally defined objectives, use command-and-control modes
of implementation and deploy monitoring indicators that are not localspecific.
Though labeled participatory, these efforts remain embedded
in economic and science-normative institutions and broader politicaleconomic
regimes, leaving little room for process-oriented approaches.
Although governmental forestry institutions are increasingly aware of the
shortcomings of their policies, they seem not to know how to respond to
the new demands placed on forestry and how to move ahead. Nor has the
international community meaningfully influenced government structures
in support of local participation.
Very locally focused participatory forestry initiatives, largely led by
nongovernmental organisations, often assume that local participation
and ‘community empowerment’ suffice to overcome forest management