Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 3: Adaptiveness and Collaboration in Community Forestry in Nepal • 69
forest office representatives). This type of exchange also served to build
personal relationships and social capital between the CFUGs and potential
service providers. As the CFUGs began to innovate institutionally, they
seemed to gain confidence and feel that they had lessons to share with
other stakeholders. This appeared to be part of a positive feedback loop
of innovation, confidence, collaboration and success. The lessons and
confidence of the CFUG helped to engage outside stakeholders and sparked
their interest in building relations with the CFUG.
Processes that encourage social learning in management
In this subsection we highlight three patterns that emerged during the PAR
that were primarily process related. These processes can be understood as
enabling social learning; because social learning cannot be separated from
stakeholder relations, they also positively affected actors, their linkages and
power relations.
Building-in learning: planning and decision making rooted in a learningoriented,
self-monitoring process. During the PAR, the CFUGs gradually
began to use self-monitoring as the core of their planning processes. The
self-monitoring was based in a yearly or half-yearly cycle of shared visioning,
development and adjustment of indicators, assessment of strengths and
weaknesses using the indicators, development and adjustment of plans
(and action groups) and implementation of actions. As noted above, tole
groups drafted sets of new and existing priorities and action plans based on
the assessment of indicators. Groups of toles and committee representatives
merged these suggestions to develop CFUG priorities and plans (which in
most cases were then circulated back to the toles). The new CFUG plans
were then finalised in the assembly and the action plans were then initiated
or continued through action groups or the committee.
This type of monitoring was used by CFUGs as a tool to increase participation
in decision making and thus ownership and representativeness of decisions,
as well as to help themselves track and adjust priorities and actions in line
with the shared vision, progress and challenges. This process required
critical reflection on multiple aspects of CF, including forests, livelihoods,
institutions and equity (as identified and bounded by the CFUG’s vision
and indicators). The self-monitoring also activated an ongoing social
learning process that encouraged reflection and applied learning for