Environmentalists gathered at Cornell recently for a symposium, hosted by the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development (CIIFAD), to advance new potentials in forest conservation worldwide. "Adaptive Collaborative Management in Protected Areas" began on Wednesday, Sept. 16, and concluded on Saturday. Participants met almost continually -- informally over breakfast and after dinner; formally at project presentations, plenary sessions and small group discussions.
Project leaders came from places as far flung as Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Madagascar and the Philippines. Scholars and policy makers came too -- from the Center for International Forest Research, CIIFAD, the World Wildlife Fund, the Center for the Environment, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and other institutions around the world.
The group explored how key concepts of sustainable forestry -- collaborative management and adaptive management -- can be merged into systems that bring together all stakeholders (such as local people, loggers and government officials) in any given bioregion to bridge what one speaker called "the abyss of disconnectedness." They proposed that as stakeholders collaborate to identify their overlapping needs, they create "adaptive agreements" -- not laws, but contracts subject to periodic review, so as to maintain relative degrees of parity and incorporate new research findings.
The issues and imperatives are daunting. But the future of protected areas -- not to mention remaining unprotected forests -- can hardly be ensured without such fundamental involvement and change.
"Our goal is to merge equity issues and environmental issues," said Louise Buck, Cornell senior extension associate and symposium organizer. "To have a sustainable future, we have to learn how we can live on the land without destroying it."
Andy White, forest economist for the World Bank, urged program leaders to press donor organizations for policy changes that favor adaptive change. He mentioned the World Bank's new Learning and Innovation Loan. "It's sort of 'new age' for us," he said. "Up 'til now all our loans were blueprint-based -- hydroelectric dams and similar projects. But this loan enables groups to identify issues and explore them. It's about innovation more than outcome."
Jeffrey Sayer, director general of the Center for International Forest Research, cautioned participants not to "create more jargon, more hoops for people to jump through." But he was positive about the potential for change. "It's good to see the people who are out there dealing with the nitty-gritty of conservation coming together with high-level academics in an egalitarian setting. These are serious issues and people have been waiting a long time for answers."
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