Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

158 • Eva Wollenberg, Ramses Iwan, Godwin Limberg, Moira Moeliono, Steve Rhee and Made Sudana
are working. We do think, however, that these sorts of approaches can
contribute to a democratic and feasible way of facilitating change. Our
goal has been not to directly facilitate collaboration so much as to create
an enabling environment for accommodating and coordinating people’s
interests, especially those of weaker groups. Muddling is messy. But it is also
a reality of political change.
Endnotes
1 This chapter elaborates on an earlier published work: Wollenberg, E., Iwan,
R., Limberg, G., Moeliono, M., Rhee, S. and Sudana, M. 2007. Facilitating cooperation
during times of chaos: spontaneous orders and muddling through in Malinau District,
Indonesia. Ecology and Society 12(1):3. Available at http://www.ecologyandsociety.
org/vol12/iss1/art3/.
2 During the course of the work, we collaborated with officials in the Bulungan
and Malinau kabupaten and kecamatan offices, including Bappeda, Dinas Kehutanan,
Dinas Pemberdayaan Masyarakat, Dinas Pertanian, Bagian Ekonomi, Bagian Hukum,
INHUTANI II (parastatal timber concession), Meranti Sakti (another local timber
concession), and the provincial Dinas Kehutanan. We have also collaborated with
Plasma, SHK-Kaltim, PPSDAK, Padi, LPMA, Phemdal, WWF, P-5-Universitas
Mataram, the University of Victoria (Canada), Wageningen University and Yale
University in various components of the work.
3 diZerega (2000) suggests that ‘cooperation’ can occur as a spontaneous order,
in which participants pursue their own ends and mutually adjust to each other. This
form of cooperation is multicentred rather than guided by a single organization.
4 Estimated from the 2003 election census.
5 See Sellato 2001 for a historical overview of the upper Malinau River during
the last 150 years.
6 President Soeharto’s resignation in May 1998 marked the end of the New
Order regime. The subsequent presidencies of B.J. Habibie, Abdurachman Wahid
and Megawati Soekarnoputri (Indonesia experienced four presidents in four years)
tried to respond to popular demands for reform as well as to distance themselves from
New Order policies. Many reforms were already in the pipeline under Soeharto but
then accelerated. The most significant changes were the 1999 decentralisation laws
(Government Regulations 22 and 25), which decentralised authority to districts and
made them responsible for generating their own income, and the 1999 basic forestry
law (Law 41), which updated the 1967 law that made it possible for nonstate entities
to engage in timber harvesting and gave customary communities the right to manage
forests. The new governments also separated the powers of the police and military,
instituted direct elections for the national assembly, and promoted more freedom of
speech, transparency and an end to corruption. After 30 years of autocratic, coercive
rule, these reforms were quite extraordinary. Unfortunately, confusion about their
implementation and liberal interpretation in the districts about their new autonomy