This book examines the value of Adaptive Collaborative Management for facilitating learning and collaboration with local communities and beyond, utilising detailed studies of forest landscapes and communities. Many forest management proposals are based on top-down strategies, such as the Million Tree Initiatives, Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) and REDD+, often neglecting local communities. In the context of the climate crisis, it is imperative that local peoples and communities are an integral part of all decisions relating to resource management. Rather than being seen as beneficiaries or people to be safeguarded, they should be seen as full partners, and Adaptive Collaborative Management is an approach which priorities the rights and roles of communities alongside the need to address the environmental crisis. The volume presents detailed case studies and real life examples from across the globe, promoting and prioritizing the voices of women and scholars and practitioners from the Global South who are often under-represented. Providing concrete examples of ways that a bottom-up approach can function to enhance development sustainably, via its practitioners and far beyond the locale in which they initially worked, this volume demonstrates the lasting utility of approaches like Adaptive Collaborative Management that emphasize local control, inclusiveness and local creativity in management. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners working in the fields of conservation, forest management, community development and natural resource management and development studies more broadly. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

Focused on forest management and governance, this book examines two decades of experience with Adaptive Collaborative Management (ACM), assessing both its uses and improvements needed to address global environmental issues. The volume argues that the activation and the empowerment of local peoples are critical to addressing current environmental challenges and that this must be enhanced by linking and extending such stewardship to global and national policymakers and actors on a broader scale. This can be achieved by employing ACM’s participatory approach, characterized by conscious efforts among stakeholders to communicate, collaborate, negotiate and seek out opportunities to learn collectively about the impacts of their action. The case studies presented here reflect decades of experience working with forest communities in three Indonesian Islands and four African countries. Researchers and practitioners who participated in CIFOR’s early ACM work had the rare opportunity to return to their research sites decades later to see what has happened. These authors reflect critically on their own experience and local site conditions to glean insights that guide us in more effectively addressing climate change and other forest-related challenges. They showcase how global and regional actors will have to work more closely with smallholders, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, recognizing the key local roles in forest stewardship. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners working in the fields of conservation, forest management, community development, natural resource management and development studies more broadly. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

The Complex Forest systematically examines the theory, processes, and early outcomes of a research and management approach called adaptive collaborative management (ACM). An alternative to positivist approaches to development and conservation that assume predictability in forest management, ACM acknowledges the complexity and unpredictability inherent in any forest community and the importance of developing solutions together with the forest peoples whose lives will be most affected by the outcomes. Building on earlier work that established the importance of flexible, collaborative approaches to sustainable forest management, The Complex Forest describes the work of ACM practitioners facing a broad range of challenges in diverse settings and attempts to identify the conditions under which ACM is most effective. Case studies of ACM in 33 forest sites in 11 countries together with Colfer's systematic comparison of results at each site indicate that human and institutional capabilities have been strengthened. In Zimbabwe, for example, the number of women involved in decisionmaking soared. In Nepal, community members detected and sanctioned dishonest community elites. In Cameroon and Bolivia, learning programs resulted in better conflict management. These are early results, but a wide range of recent research supports Colfer's belief that these new capabilities will eventually contribute to higher incomes and to sustainable improvements in the health of forests and forest peoples. The Complex Forest reinforces calls for change in the way we plan conservation and development programs, away from command-and-control approaches, toward ones that require bureaucratic flexibility and responsiveness, as well as greater local participation in setting priorities and problem solving.

This book assesses the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) and identifies lessons learned for governance and policy through this new and innovative approach to collaborative forest management. Unlike anything else in US public land management, the CFLRP is a nationwide program that requires collaboration throughout the life of national forest restoration projects, joining agency partners and local stakeholder groups in a kind of decade-long restoration marriage. This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the governance dynamics of the program, examining: questions about collaborative governance processes and the dynamics of trust, accountability and capacity; how scientific information is used in making decisions and integrated into adaptive management processes; and the topic of collaboration through implementation, an underdeveloped area of collaborative governance literature. Bringing together chapters from a community of social science and policy researchers who have conducted studies across multiple CFLRP projects, this volume generates insights, not just about the program, but also about dynamics that are central to collaborative and landscape approaches to land management and relevant for broader practice. This volume is a timely and important contribution to environmental governance scholarship. It will be of interest to researchers and students of natural resource management, environmental governance, and forestry, as well as practitioners and policy makers involved in forest and ecosystem restoration efforts, and collaborative natural resource management more broadly.

This book provides a novel approach to governance relating to biodiversity and human well-being in complex tropical landscapes, including forests and protected areas. It focuses attention at the interface between communities and the landscape level, building on interdisciplinary research conducted in five countries (Cameroon, Indonesia, Laos, Madagascar and Tanzania). In each country, the research was set within the framework of a major national policy thrust. The book improves our understanding of and ability to manage complex landscapes---mosaics of differing land uses---in a more adaptive and collaborative way that benefits both the environment and local communities. It includes both single country and cross-site analyses, and focuses on themes, such as resettlement, land use planning, non-timber forest product use and management, the disconnect between customary and formal legal systems, and the role of larger scale policies in local level realities. Chapters also analyze experience with monitoring and a local governance assessment tool. The work also provides guidance for those interested in management and governance at lower and intermediate levels (village, district), scales likely to grow in importance in the global effort to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Learning to Adapt looks at a learning-based approach to collaboration known as Adaptive Collaborative Management (ACM) implemented by CIFOR in Sumatra and Kalimantan. This is a particularly useful reference for community workers, NGO field staff, government extension workers, and anyone wanting to learn more about facilitating local action and learning-based approaches to forest management.

We live in a world of wide pendulum swings regarding management policies for protected areas, particularly as they affect the involvement of local people in management. Such swings can be polarizing and halt on-the-ground progress. There is a need to find ways to protect biodiversity while creating common ground and building management capacity thr