Pluralism And The Less Powerful: Experiences In Accommodating Multiple Interests In Local Forest Management (an introduction and synthesis)
E. Wollenberg*, J. Anderson,** D. Edmunds*
*Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
PO Box 6596 JKPWB, Jakarta 10065, Indonesia

**USAID, Environment Division, Asia, Washington DC

We review approaches to accommodate multiple interests in forest management, especially where politically weak populations compete or conflict with more powerful entities. The paper draws upon the six papers in this issue and the literature to identify key debates and methodological conclusions. We develop a framework for analyzing existing practices by which interests are defined, communicated, modified, accommodated or excluded. We suggest that the purpose of accommodation should be to facilitate transparency and social learning, rather than necessarily conciliate interests. We review existing approaches for achieving this transparency and social learning, while addressing three issues: Who drives and coordinates the process of accommodation? What are the transaction costs and time requirements of accommodation? What are the limits to achieving equitable and just outcomes?

Keywords: multiple interests, pluralism, equity, conflict, transparency, social learning

Understanding Conflict And Collaboration In Accommodating Multiple Stakeholders' Interests
Ricardo Ramírez
International Support Group: Linking local experience in agroecosystem management

Conflict and collaboration are often treated as mutually exclusive modes of stakeholder interaction, with little understanding of the contextual dimensions in which stakeholder relationships take place. The conceptual framework in this paper addresses accommodating multiple interests as an evolving, cyclical, iterative process, swinging back and forth from collaborative to conflictive situations. A typology is presented with eight contextual dimensions that come into play in accommodating multiple interests: the nature of the problem, the stakeholders, the convenor, the networks, stakeholders' capacities, stakeholders' choices over procedures to deal with conflict, negotiation, and dispute resolution. The eight dimensions function as lenses though which to analyse a multiple stakeholder situations. The typology is used to analyse four existing methodologies: Collaborative Management, Collaborative Learning, Rapid Appraisal of Agricultural Knowledge Systems (RAAKS) and Linked Local Learning. A set of criteria to assess their impact is developed, and desirable future directions for methodological development are discussed.

Keywords: stakeholder analysis, accommodating multiple interests, collaboration, conflict, collaborative management, learning

The Politics Of Accommodating Multiple Interests In Local Forest Management: The Indian Experience
Amita Baviskar
Department of Sociology
University of Delhi

The multiplicity of interests around forests in India reflects the range of social groups who have a stake in their management. Forestry practices, and the ideologies that legitimize them, have been shaped by the political differences prevailing among these collectivities. This paper examines how power relations at the global, national and local levels have affected forest management. It attempts to link the accommodation of specific interests in forestry to the configurations of power obtaining in particular social and historical circumstances. The analysis focuses on the central role of state institutions and ideologies in shaping forest management and discusses how state practices have changed in response to pressures from global and local actors. In conclusion, the paper examines the potential within contemporary forest management practices to further the objectives of social justice and ecological sustainability.

Keywords: Politics, India, forestry, social justice

Multiple Interest Accommodation In African Forest Management Projects: Between Pragmatism And Theoretical Coherence
Didier Babin and Martine Antona
Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD)
Campus International de Baillarguet , B.P. 5035
F-34032 Montpellier Cedex 1, France

Forest management in Africa is increasingly making use of participatory methods to better accommodate multiple interests and shift away from what has been critiqued as inequitable state-centered forestry. Although donors, firms, NGOs, and governments have tried different participatory approaches in their forest projects, rigorous social science analysis of the impacts of these methods have been absent or inadequate. We therefore investigated the contributions of collective action theories on accommodating multiple interests. From this analysis, the paper proposes a framework to analyze accommodation in forest management projects at different stages (objective setting, context identification, justification, diagnosis, implementation). We applied the Multiple Interest Accommodation Assessment (MIAA) framework to nine African countries and showed its usefulness in identifying more coherent approaches to participation and interest accommodation in complex forest management situations.

Keywords: Multiple interest accommodation, tropical forest ecosystems management, participatory approach, project assessment, Africa, Madagascar.

Accommodating Multiple Interests In Local Forest Management In Latin America: A Focus On Facilitation, Actors And Practices
Paul G.H. Engel, Anouk Hoeberichts & Laurent Umans
Centro de Estudios y Gestión para el Desarrollo Rural Sostenible (CEDRO)
Universidad de Concepción
Chillan, Chile

Forest Trees and People Programme,
FAO, La Paz, Bolivia

This paper focuses on approaches used to facilitate the process of accommodation among multiple stakeholders in Local Forest Management (LFM). Practice shows that accommodating multiple interests among stakeholders in Local Forest Management (LFM) is always necessary. Yet it is not always a problem. We seek to explain what characterizes a situation requiring facilitation of the process of accommodating interests among stakeholders and what accommodations are called for. We explore why social actors have to adapt, and what they adapt to. We accept that where accommodation processes are called for, power relationships among stakeholders are usually skewed, which has implications for facilitation. After exploring some theoretical issues to construct an analytical window for understanding accommodation processes, we review the practical application of two different approaches to these questions in Latin America. We present cases from Peru and Bolivia representing two approaches to facilitating accommodation among stakeholders in local forest development. We draw the lessons learned concerning facilitation practice and suggest criteria for assessing approaches to facilitating LFM.

Keywords: multiple interests, empowerment, facilitation, Peru, Bolivia

"Who" Represents Local People In Decentralised Forest Management
Jesse Ribot
World Resources Institute
Washington DC USA

In the current era of participatory development, natural resource management (NRM) policies and projects rely on local institutions and authorities as vehicles for local participation. To strengthen these policies and projects, the paper explores the basis for creating sustainable, locally accountable rural institutions. I encourage a move away from participation as a project component and toward the creation of locally accountable governance as a means of assuring that government serves the needs of its constituents--a much stronger and more durable form of participation. I examine the experiences of participatory forestry institutions in four countries (Senegal, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso). Based on project documents and interviews in project villages, the analysis draws lessons for improving the links between decentralization and community participation and between development interventions and sustainable institutional change.

Keywords: Representation, participation, accountability, institutions, West Africa

Plural Perspectives And Institutional Dynamics: Challenges For Local Forest Management
Melissa Leach and James Fairhead
Environment Group
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex

Department of Anthropology
School of Oriental & African Studies
University of London

Co-management approaches in forestry have frequently failed to fulfill their promise and have generated unexpected conflicts. This is partly because their settings are more socially, institutionally and ecologically differentiated and dynamic than is often assumed. This article outlines and illustrates key dimensions of this dynamism, and hence why more adaptive, reflexive processes of forest and natural resource management may be needed. We address some of the socially diverse interests and dynamics existing among forest users and the variability and unpredictability of ecological processes, and hence outlines a dynamic landscape perspective on forests. We then critically review analytical tools for 'tracking' the details of these dynamics, and dealing with key issues of resource access and control. In this context, we then illustrate how institutional dynamics can work out in practice when villagers, governmental, non-governmental, and donor agencies interact in the practice of community forestry. The need to take account of multiple institutions and power relations, to manage pluralism rather than necessarily attempting to achieve consensus, and to appreciate social and ecological uncertainties, suggests that forest management should seek to influence processes rather than to define states, and be adaptive rather than pre-planned.

Keywords: Pluralism, institutions, adaptive management