The best books to bring people into forest management

The collection focuses on communities in the tropics – specifically in Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, Indonesia, Malawi, Nepal, Philippines, and Zimbabwe – where the Adaptive Collaborative Management approach discussed in my own book was first used, in the early 2000s. The examples in this book focus on the centrality of learning in the ACM process. When we developed our version of ACM (at the Center for International Forestry Research), we imagined the monitoring would build on the literature on criteria and indicators in sustainable forest management (C&I). It did that, and more. This book shows the many ways that the program itself ‘walked the talk,’ using its emphasis on learning to expand our own approach beyond its beginnings—just as our own new book does.

The articles in this book provide a thorough understanding of the diversity of the local communities in this area of Borneo, their characteristics, and their conflictual interactions with government, industry, and other outside actors. The location is just north of the area of Borneo with which I myself have been periodically involved, research-wise, since 1979. Although the adaptive collaborative management program discussed in my own book initially intended to use this site as one of their own, the researchers involved chose a different path. Still, the book addresses issues of collaboration and adaptation, from a variety of perspectives; and I found the similarities and differences with the nearby area I know well fascinating. The book also documents a fascinating period in Indonesia’s recent history.

This book is as much a manual as a book, but I particularly liked it because it provided me with specific examples of ways that local communities had been involved in forest issues – a topic I was struggling with how to implement in the late 1990s (as we developed the ACM approach on which my own book focuses). Carter’s book also had chapters on collaboration, on learning, on local management – all within a forestry framework, in a variety of tropical countries. As I glance through it again, to consider this description, I realize much of its contents remain relevant in 2022.

Butler and Shultz pull together authors who have worked on the American CFLRP, a broader scale attempt to implement a collaborative and adaptive approach in the US – with a different genesis, history, goal, and funding than my own work, entitled ACM. Yet, the similarities were fascinating, so much so that I wrote a paper comparing the two approaches. I was also fascinated to read this book, as I was in the process of gaining more understanding of the issue of forest restoration – especially as it relates to communities – which this book addresses.

This book is the fourth in a series on forest decentralization globally, a series for which I edited the other three books. So I was gratified to see how this one turned out. I appreciate it because it provides some of the same contextual material on governance in Africa – an area I know less well – that the book by Moeliono et al. provided for Borneo. Some of the authors and one editor had also been members of the original ACM teams in Africa (in the early 2000s), bringing some of their own related insights into the discussion.