Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

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Chapter 6. Facilitating Change from the Inside: Adaptive Collaborative Management in the Philippines Herlina Hartanto C ommunity participation in the management of forests and other natural resources has received growing attention from scholars, policy makers, donor agencies and nongovernmental organisations. This reflects an increased realisation that natural resources are complex and their management cannot be handled by the state alone. The Philippines attempted to engage communities in the management of its vast forests much earlier than most other countries in Asia. Its community forestry policy has been described as one of the most innovative in Southeast Asia, and the designed transfer of rights over forest resources to communities has been called impressive (Lynch 1993; Colchester 1994). The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), which oversees the implementation of community forestry programmes, has been applauded for empowering the community and considered one of the most progressive environmental agencies in the region (Poffenberger 1990; Fox 1993). It is no surprise that the Philippine community forestry system has been a model for other countries.
Chapter 6: Facilitating Change from the Inside in the Philippines • 163 The Philippine government wants to engage communities in forest management for good reason: around 52 percent of the country’s land area, or around 15.8 million ha, is forestland 1 (FMB 2002), and without the involvement of local people, it would be hard for the government to manage these vast forestlands on its own. The history of forest management in the Philippines nevertheless reveals quite a different story. The right and ability of local communities to manage these resources were not always recognised and respected by the state. Space for community involvement has been granted only in the past few decades. In fact, it took the Philippine government more than three decades to develop its community forestry programme. The umbrella programme, called Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM), was launched in 1995, and its implementation still faces many problems, particularly in dealing with the complexities of the social, biophysical and political aspects of forest management. It is these difficulties that the action research on adaptive collaborative management sought to confront. In this chapter, I describe how the adaptive collaborative management approach and processes helped two communities and their local stakeholders deal with the complexities of forest management. The research indicates that by facilitating change from inside the government programme and inside the local organisations that are responsible for managing the community forests, the ACM approach and processes can improve the implementation of community forestry in the Philippines. I point out areas of community forest management that were specifically strengthened by the ACM approach and process, and I describe the challenges that need to be addressed for community forestry in the Philippines and for ACM to be more broadly effective. Community forestry in the Philippines Historical sketch of forest management The rich forest resources of the Philippines have been under the control of the state government since the 19th century. The state, both colonial and postcolonial, asserted its control over resources by mapping and zoning the territories, enacting land and forest laws on the use of resources, establishing state agencies to implement and enforce those laws and defining the rights of the people over the resources (Peluso and Vandergeest 2001). The Spanish
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iv • Contents Chapter 5. Muddling
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viii • About the Contributors God
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Acknowledgements In early 1999, two
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Chapter 1. Introduction: People, Fo
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Chapter 2: Adaptive Collaborative M
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Chapter 3: Adaptiveness and Collabo
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Chapter 4: Improving Forest Quality
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Chapter 7: Discussion and Conclusio
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CIFOR is a leading international fo
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