Since the 1970s, Community forestry (CF) initiatives have sought to combine sustainable forestry, community participation and poverty alleviation. Like other community-based forms of natural resource management (CBNRM), CF has been lauded for its potential to involve local people in conservation while opening new opportunities for economic development. However, CF programmes are not always successful, economically or ecologically, and, by devolving new powers and responsibilities to an abstractly defined "community," they risk exacerbating existing patterns of social exclusion, and creating new conflicts. In this paper we mobilise a relational concept of negotiation within a political ecology framework to explore how the power relations of CF are addressed and transformed in a region where issues of conflict and tenure security have long shaped the social forest. Specifically, we focus on the emergence and consolidation of ACOFOP [Asociación de Comunidades Forestales de Petén], a Forest Based Association in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the Petén region of Guatemala, where CF has been practised for 25 years. Emphasising the importance of longer histories of social movements and organisations to local capacities for CF, we explore the conditions of possibility that enabled ACOFOP to emerge, as well as the strategies it has adopted to make national regulatory frameworks work for local communities. Through qualitative analysis derived from participatory research, interviews and ethnographic data, we trace four key areas of ACOFOP's model of accompaniment (participatory decision-making; conflict resolution; advocacy and capacity-building) that have been developed in response to the negotiation of political issues pertaining to, and stemming from, the practice of CF. Highlighting ongoing challenges, and key strategies for CBNRM in other contexts, we conclude by emphasising that systems of community management cannot be "equitable," or indeed sustainable, if political issues of access and tenure are not kept central to questions of participation.
The co-management concept has been echoed in scientific literature for over two decades. Emphasis has been tailored towards an understanding of structural and functional issues linked to its application and the outcomes thereof. However, a crucial aspect which still begs for scientific and policy edification, concerns the motivational drivers of actors’ participation in co-management arrangements. Studies contend that actors are motivated to participate in co-management based on their perceived benefits (e.g., income). Conclusions from these lines of argument further raise a theoretical quagmire, requiring further grounding, with regards to context-specific (de)motivators of users’ participation in co-management. The case of Nepal is pertinent. Although Nepal has a rich community-based forest management history, scientific investigations have virtually ignored the motivational drivers of participation in the co-management of natural resources (forests). Against this background, this paper seeks to explore the following: (i) the decision-making and monitoring structure of rules regulating the co-management of forests, (ii) the implications of this system on users’ motivation to participate, and (iii) the motivational drivers of users’ participation in co-management. To achieve this, five focus group discussions and 10 key informant interviews were conducted in five villages (Kunjo, Titi, Parshyang, Cchayo, and Taglung) within the Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA). We further employed narratives, framework, and thematic analyses to discuss the decision-making structure and motivational aspects of co-management. The results point to the following conclusions: (1) Despite the rather top-down decision-making setting, users remain motivated to participate in co-management. (2) Interestingly, the motivation by actors to participate is not largely driven by users’ perceived benefits. The results present another twist, a deviation from the previously understood rationale, which should be factored into co-management theory development. However, the paper equally makes a succinct request for further studies, including quantitative investigations, to ground this assertion.
Participatory research on forests has been commended for fostering social learning, innovation, community empowerment, social inclusion, and leading to more sustainable resource management. Yet, critiques of participatory approaches -and of the simplistic ways they are, at times, employed to address gender and social exclusionalso abound. These call for new strategies to meaningfully engage socially differentiated men and women in research on natural resource management. This special issue focuses on the nexus between gender and participatory research in forest and woodland management. It examines: (1) the diversity of stakeholders' forest-related knowledge, skills, needs and priorities in forest-dependent communities through the use of gender-responsive participatory approaches, and (2) choices in research design that can foster inclusive participation, knowledge sharing and social learning within and among social groups. In this introductory paper, we position the special issue in relation to critiques regarding the lack of attention to gender in participatory research. We then summarize the authors empirical findings, contextually rooted across four African and Asian countries, and their importance for understanding the value, opportunities and challenges of working with participatory methods, both from the perspective of the researchers and of the research participants. The papers illustrate that traditional ecological knowledge is neither homogeneously distributed within communities nor concentrated among socially more powerful groups who, in the absence of a gender-responsive approach, are often the ones selected as research participants. The authors offer an optimistic view of the potential participatory methods hold, when applied in a gender-responsive way, for sharing knowledge and promoting inclusive social learning on forests and tree resources. Papers demonstrate the need to carefully consider when to create segregated or mixed spaces -or indeed both -for participants to create situations in which social learning within and across diverse social groups can occur.
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