Assessing "Participation" in Forest Management: Workable Methods and Unworkable Assumptions

Paper reports the results of a pre-test in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, of four methods designed to assess the level and nature of participation by local people in forest management quickly and easily. Two of the methods --- the "Iterative Continuum Method" (ICM) and the participatory card sorting method --- were deemed helpful. One method, the communication network analysis, was discarded, in its current form. The final method, the researcher guide on the functions of participation, was felt to need revision. Although the hypothesized functions of participation are not, in our opinion, wrong, they reflect a way of looking at forest management which, we concluded, needs rethinking. In our discussion of the change needed, we make use of Jordan's concept of "authoritative knowledge" and "social" or "cultural capital" (Ostrom 1994; Berkes and Folke 1994). We also suggest substituting "rights and obligations to manage the forest cooperatively" for "participation" in places like DSWR, where sustainable forest management is being assessed. Finally we conclude that, given the dynamism and complexity that characterize natural forests and their inhabitants, cooperation among all stakeholders in an ongoing dialogue is probably the only way that sustainable forest management can in fact occur. We urge researchers to continue the search for simple, inexpensive and reliable tools for assessing the issue we have called "participation in forest management." [author]