Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 3: Adaptiveness and Collaboration in Community Forestry in Nepal • 63
self-monitoring workshop, and facilitating the reiterations of the
monitoring.
• Mobilising people and raising awareness about an ACM approach
in community forestry, building capacity for management and
governance and sharing information, mostly through researchers’
ongoing participation in and facilitation of ACM processes and
activities related to CFUG annual planning, including committee,
tole (hamlet) and CFUG action group meetings.
• Facilitating and/or supporting related activities, such as a workshop
to raise gender awareness, cross-site visits, community forestry–
based quiz contests and training in facilitation.
• Facilitating critical reflection of CFUG members on the institutional
changes that took place during the participatory action research.
This reflection was part of the CFUG self-monitoring process and
occurred periodically in the groups’ planning processes, CFUG
committee meetings and the final reassessments during the wrapup
of the research.
During the PAR phase, while the ACM approach was being facilitated,
researchers also used a range of social science research methods, such as
focus groups and participant observation, to track changes in influences,
conditions, institutional arrangements, processes and outcomes.
Subsequent to the completion of this project, CIFOR and research partners
ForestAction and NewERA initiated an IDRC-funded followup project
entitled ‘Enhancing Livelihoods and Equity in Community Forestry in
Nepal: The Role of Adaptive Collaborative Management’. This project,
which ran from 2004 to 2007, aimed to track the changes over time in the
four main case study sites, as well as investigate the scope for the facilitation
of an ACM approach to be led by local and meso-level actors (rather than
by the ACM researchers) in seven new CFUG sites. This project has also
expanded the research focus to include more participatory exploration
of the role of adaptiveness and collaboration in meso-level and national
governance. This chapter focuses on lessons from the first project but
adds some preliminary insights about the institutionalisation of the ACM
approach based on experiences of the second project.