Community managed forest systems embody a considerable portion of the wisdom, knowledge, and practical skills and management necessary for the sustainability of forest resources globally. These systems, however, are under threat in many ways, including from the rapid rate of change of their political, socio-economic, and biophysical contexts. Adapting forest management sufficiently quickly and effectively to meet these changes is both urgent and very challenging.

The author highlights conceptual, substantive and methodological aspects of participatory action research (PAR) into adaptive collaborative management (ACM) of community forest in some selected FUGs in the Hills of Nepal. Three main concepts of ACM identified as the core of research include: collaboration among stakeholders, conscious social learning and application of learning feedback to management. Ten specific elements have been recently innovated around the three broad areas of ACM, and the research team uses them as a basis to assess and facilitate action research at local level.

Scenario methods can be used to anticipate the future and expand the creativity of people thinking about complex forest management situations. This manual describes the use of scenarios with multiple stakeholders, with examples drawn from community-based forest management. Four classes of scenario methods are described: visions, projections, pathways and alternative scenarios. Examples of rapid participatory techniques relevant to scenario methods are also summarised.

CIFOR's ACM program has been carrying out participatory action research with local communities to devise models for forest management by multiple stakeholders. One of the early requests by communities has been for the mapping of their villages. This report describes the facilitation team's observations during the process of mapping these territories (villages along the Malinau river, Kalimantan, Indonesia). Central theme is the question what caused conflicts within and between villages and how were these handled and overcome by the communities.

Secondary forests form a major component of the forest types in the Central Himalayan region and in the north eastern hills of India. Deforestation in these areas is largely due to external pressures of timber extraction for industrial use. When large scale deforestation from outside the region is superimposed upon the demands of the local communities for food, fodder and fuelwood, the previously balanced use of forest resources, including the management of swidden fallow secondary forests, becomes impaired.

This brief article begins with a summary of CIFOR's work on criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management (C&I). It then discusses how CIFOR programs combined to form the program called Local People, Devolution and Adaptive Collaborative Management of Forests". It briefly describes the research approach and the research design underway in 9 countries.

How can different interest groups engage together in learning processes that enable them to better manage community forests? In this volume, practitioners from eight countries document their experience with the aim of identifying how to characterize social learning, as well as how to improve upon current practice. Analysis of current approaches to facilitation and the circumstances or platforms of learning indicate the need for more attention to the different avenues and styles of learning and the potential benefits of using multiple avenues.

This study focuses on the impacts of decentralisation on forests and estate crops in the original districts of Kampar and Indragiri Hulu, located in Riau Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. The research was conducted during 2000, preceding the beginnings of decentralisation in January 2001, with a brief follow-up to March of that year. It was important to chart attitudes to decentralisation at provincial level, as well as examine the deconcentration of the regional office of the Jakarta-based Ministry of Forestry and Estate Crops.

Malinau District, established through partition in 1999, is the largest district in East Kalimantan and contains some of its largest tracts of forest. With decentralization, the district has sought to generate revenues from its forests, but these efforts have been handicapped by a concurrent lack of institutional capacities to manage rapid forest exploitation and conflicts over claims. Timber extraction and utilization permits (Izin Pemungutan dan Pemanfaatan Kayu or IPPK) have been the main instrument for revenue generation, with 39 IPPK covering 56,000 ha.

This paper provides an economic perspective on concepts related to adaptive co-management (ACM). The discussion is cast within a formal generalised complex system (CS) framework. The authors explicitly explore the hypothesis of whether ACM can be regarded as an emergent strategy under specific conditions. The conditions draw a corollary from the well-known work of Adam Smith that describes 'self interest' as a forcing factor (the 'invisible hand) that lead to stability and efficiency in economic systems.

Throughout Southern Africa there has been a move to decentralize natural resource management (NRM). Decentralization has taken many forms, resulting in different organizational structures for NRM. Fourteen case studies from eight countries can be classed into four types, depending on the key organizations for NRM: (1) district-level organizations; (2) village organizations supported by sectoral departments (e.g. Village Forest Committees); (3) organizations or authorities outside the state hierarchy (e.g.

Most forests in tropical Nepal are secondary, resulting largely from episodes of large-scale timber harvesting in the past along with accumulated small scale extraction of timber and non-timber forest products by local people over centuries. Currently in the forest depleted stage, remaining tropical secondary forests are still very important for fulfilling the subsistence and economic needs of local people, as well as for biodiversity conservation, groundwater recharge, and the protection of lowland agriculture from landslides and floods.