Learning and adaptation in community forestry management in the Philippines

The Philippines has won international praise for its community forestry programmes. In reality, however, the country’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has not fully devolved management rights to community groups (People’s Organisations) or engaged local governments in community forestry management.

The DENR places greatimportance on the technical and production aspects of forestry, and it has excessivelegal and administrative requirements. These have made it difficult for People’sOrganisations (POs) to innovate or adapt their management strategies to fit thesesocio-economic and political requirements.

The Adaptive Collaborative Management (ACM) project,run by the Center for International Forestry Research(CIFOR), attempted to improve community forestry in the Philippines. The aimwas to increase the capacity of POs, the DENR and other relevant localstakeholders (including local government institutions and non-governmentalinstitutions) to engage in collective action, joint learning and collaborativemonitoring.

The project put representatives from each group at thecentre of forest management processes, which involve reflection, planning,action and monitoring. The expectation was that key stakeholders would improvetheir forest management practices and their adaptive capacities throughcontinuous development.

A recentbook chapter reviews the project experiences of the CIFOR team in two communityforests: San Rafael-Tanabag-Conception in Palawan province and Basac in Bukidnon province. The study explains how the adaptivecollaborative processes were used to address three particular issues:

• aforest boundary dispute between a PO and the neighbouring indigenouscommunity in Palawan, which affected their almacigaresin extraction activities
• low-levelcommunity participation in community forest management, Palawan
• thelack of medicines in Bukidnon.

The ACM processesproduced several important results:

• Better information, greater resource sharing and morecollective action among representatives of POs, the DENR, local governmentagencies and non-governmental organisations.
• POs became more transparent and accountable;joint planning and learning exposed their management to the scrutiny ofother stakeholders and compelled them to improve.
• Members of POs became better at identifying the causes of theirproblems, the weaknesses of their past management strategies andidentifying more viable solutions to problems.
• Members of POs obtained greaterskills and capacities in forest management.
• There were higher levels of trust withinand between POs and other stakeholders, and greater awareness of theimportance of collaboration and learning in forest planning andmanagement.

The success of the ACM approach and processes wasdependent on the willingness of POs, the DENR and other local stakeholders to communicate, treat one another as equal partners,collaborate, learn and improve their forest management strategies. It also dependedheavily on skilful facilitators who could bring different stakeholders togetherand enable effective learning processes.

Toimprove community forestry in the Philippines, the researcherrecommends that the DENR:

• supportcommunity members to meet legal requirements
• fullyengage local governments and other stakeholders in forest managementprocesses
• redesignthe existing local system to monitor POs and makes it a more meaningfullearning tool
• pay more attention to the social relationsand power dynamics within and between POs and community groups, and their differentlivelihood needs.