This 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 in need of revision.

Previous research identified three important issues of relevance to forest people's roles in sustain- able forest management which we address here: the presence of a Conservation ethics, a feeling of closeness to the forest, and a significant forest-culture link. In this paper we examine a method (the Galileo), recently pre-tested for this purpose in West Kalimantan, which we hope can help us to assess such issues quickly, reliably and in a quantitative manner amenable to use by would-be assessors of various educational and experiential levels.

In the Congo Basin most of the light-demanding timber tree species display a deficit of natural regeneration which is a major handicap for sustainable production and certification. Whilst the majority of scientists investigate abiotic and biotic factors explaining that pattern, we hypothesize that tree population density or individual spatial isolation may also affect the tree fitness through inbreeding.

This book is a report of a short-term research project. The project aimed to test an approach for estimating local values for landscape units and relate these to formal biodiversity conservation values in Gorongosa National Park (GNP), Sofala Province, Mozambique. First section describes the research site selection and gives short descriptions of the chosen sites: Muaredzi and Nhanchururu. Second section is about the community landscape valuations, includes also the methods and results concerning conceptual models, spatial data sets, and participatory community assessments.

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.

Since President Soeharto stepped down, decentralization has offered a better governance system for this nation of more than 220 million people of varied ethnic groups spread over more than 15,000 islands. Despite its potential, implementation of decentralization has been riddled with unexpected problems. Decentralization turned out to have created problems, ranging from conflicts among people who refused regional fragmentation, conflicts between newly-created districts and the original, larger district from which they were created, and between local and central government.