Action and Learning: An Approach for Facilitating a Change in Knowledge and Power Relationship in Community Forestry

Abstract

Though forestry issues have been associated with wider socio-economic, environmental and political concerns, the knowledge and power dynamics embedded in the process of its management has largely been ignored. The knowledge, tools and techniques that we had been applying in the past have not been useful to the extent of favoring the poor and marginalized section of community. There seemed a lack of effort for systematic learning to reflect and change the unequal relationships among stakeholders of
resource management. This paper describes the action learning approach, which was implemented in a Community Forest User Group (CFUG) of Terai region of Nepal. Drawing lessons from the empirical evidences, it concludes that action learning can be an approach to change the status quo and the knowledge dynamics in CFUG by developing leadership and raising the critical awareness among the
users, particularly the poor and marginalized.