Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

104 • Trikurnianti Kusumanto
outsiders—government officials and commercial logging companies. The
ACM intervention was designed to address the following problems:
• Livelihood options were limited because the village area and the
Lumut Mountain Protection Forest overlapped, and villagers were
excluded from the benefits of logging by the timber companies.
• The relationship between community actors (particularly between
community and village leaders) was weak, with low social capital and
poor communication and information exchange.
• The capacity of communities to communicate and negotiate with
outsiders was limited by their lack of confidence in dealing with
government agencies and distrust of the timber companies.
• Little information was exchanged between communities on the one
hand and government and companies on the other.
ACM in East Kalimantan sought to incorporate two aims: improving local
people’s livelihoods, and advancing their bargaining position in negotiating
with outside actors about the management of natural resources and the
benefits derived from them.
ACM ‘intervention’ process
Although the two interventions focused on different problems in different
contexts, both sought to create conditions for learning rather than achieve
particular targets. The interventions proceeded in three phases: diagnosis
of problem situations, planning and implementation. From the three-phase
cycle, it may seem that an ACM intervention does not substantially differ from
program cycles in general. What distinguishes the ACM approach from other
interventions is its deliberate learning. As discussed below, the implementation
phase comprised the typical iterative steps of an action research process:
observation, planning, action, and reflection (Figure 4-2). It was in particular
the iterative nature of the implementation phase that shaped conditions for
learning and enabled stakeholders to adapt their plans.