This report seeks to present micro evidence on how environmental changes affect poor households. It focuses primarily on environmental resources that are outside the private sphere, particularly commonly held and managed resources such as forests, fisheries, and wildlife. The objectives for this volume are three-fold. It is first interested in using an empirical data-driven approach to examine the dependence of the poor on natural resources. The second objective is to examine the role of the environment in determining health outcomes.

The brief describes development planning consultations, locally known as musrenbang, conducted in stages through different levels of governance: village, sub-district and district. The brief then documents lessons from experience catalyzing collective action among local community goups (in particular women’s groups) to engage in this development process and to help articulate the women’s aspirations in such a way that they could be heard by district decision makers.

Tulisan ini disusun untuk membantu pihak-pihak yang tertarik bekerja dengan kelompok-kelompok kecil (biasanya suatu masyarakat atau kelompok dalam masyarakat) untuk membantu mereka mencapai tujuannya. Tulisan disusun atas dasar berbagai literatur tentang pengelolaan hutan dan sumberdaya alam berbasis masyarakat, pengalaman menjadi katalisator aksi kolektif di lebih dari 30 masyarakat di 11 negara dengan menggunakan suatu pendekatan yang disebut Adaptive Collaborative Management (ACM); dan pengalaman mendorong aksi kolektif dua kelompok masyarakat di Sumatra.

The brief illustrates two communities’ efforts through collective action to secure property rights over their land. As conflict over natural resources and the need for sufficient farm land continue to increase, both men’s and women’s groups tried to negotiate their rights to manage natural resources to maintain their livelihoods. The groups also tried various governmental schemes and other approaches to secure their rights over land.

This Policy Brief: (1) outlines recommendations for change and improvement; (2) describes the legal and institutional infrastructure of decentralized forest management in Cameroon; (3) describes how basic mechanisms of decentralized forest management operate in practice; and (4) summarizes the findings of five years of World Resources Institute (WRI)-Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) research on decentralized forestry policy and practice.