RECOFTC – The Center for People and Forests holds a unique and important place in the world of forestry. With over
25 years of internaional experience and a dynamic approach to capacity building – involving research and analysis, demonstraion sites, training products and services, and strategic communicaions – RECOFTC delivers innovaive soluions for people and forests.
One key area of RECOFTC’s work looks at conlict transformaion, using an approach that aims not only to resolve conlict, but also to promote condiions that create long-term cooperaive relaions. Through trainings and outreach aciviies, RECOFTC seeks to build the capacity of stakeholders in community forestry and natural resource management to engage efecively in paricipatory conlict resoluion. In addiion, RECOFTC carries out research and analysis to develop a sound knowledge basis for the capacity development process, and to inform policy makers, academics, and praciioners on the importance of supporing paricipatory conlict resoluion.
Why analyze conlict mediaion in Asia?
Conlict over forest resources is one of the major challenges in forest management. Researchers have observed that the number and severity of forest conlicts in Asia has increased over ime, and that forest conlicts are now widespread across the region. In Cambodia in 2009, 236 community-outsider conlicts were recorded. In Indonesia, 359 incidents of forest-related community-outsider conlict were ideniied between 1997 and 2003, with numbers increasing over ime. This high concentraion of forest conlict makes Southeast Asia one of the ‘hotspots’ of forest conlict in the world. While conlict causes both posiive impacts (including stronger collecive acion and increased awareness of conlict issues) and negaive ones, the negaive aspects – anxiety and fear, disharmony and division among social groups, economic and social costs, and environmental degradaion – predominate. This situaion may threaten the lives of many of the 450 million people living in and around Asia’s 734 million ha forests.
Conflict mediation in Asia’s increasingly pressured forests:
To minimize the negaive (and maximize the posiive) impacts of forest conlicts, there is a need to develop and strengthen appropriate conlict management methods, tools, and pracices. A RECOFTC study published in 2012 found that the involvement of a mediator who is credible, neutral, and able to develop paricipatory processes can be fundamental to successful, sustainable conlict management in Asia. Unfortunately, the study also found that mediaion capacity and skills in Asia are low, indicaing a criical need to train and support addiional mediators. Some studies of mediaion in Asia show that many communiies in this region use diferent, oten unique tradiional mediaion pracices, which could be a more efecive alternaive to western mediaion approach in certain cases. Indeed, there is an overarching need to explore mediaion approaches that are culturally appropriate in managing conlict.
What are we looking at when analyzing conlict mediaion in Asia?
In this context, RECOFTC started analyzing conlict mediaion pracices in Asia with the aim of developing a beter understanding of mediaion, gaining insight into challenges, and strengthening mediaion pracices. This research also atempts to capture difering percepions of the value and success of the mediaion process and its outcomes. The inal product will present indings on best pracices in forest conlict mediaion in the region, discuss trends observed through the analysis of various case studies, and propose recommendaions for the development and applicaion of conlict mediaion in conlict transformaion as well as development of policy and capacity building aciviies for conlict mediaion.
How, where, and when will we analyze conlict mediaion?
The research will follow four stages:
A literature review
1. is currently underway to idenify best pracices in conlict mediaion and to develop a
comprehensive understanding of the diferent theories and their applicaions. The review, which began in January 2012, primarily focuses on natural resource conlicts, though it will also cover other types of conlict for comparaive
purposes.
A regional expert workshop
2. was held in April 2012 with praciioners and experts in natural resource conlict
mediaion. Workshop paricipants provided opinions on the research framework and discussed diferent mediaion methods and their strengths and limitaions. The workshop, held in Bangkok, involved experts from China, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, and Thailand, as well as regional experts from RECOFTC.
Naional expert workshops
3. are being planned to draw together experts and praciioners in each of the study
countries to elicit their perspecive on the indings of the case studies and issues related to forest conlict management, paricularly mediaion, in their country.
Case studies
4. will be developed to examine the applicaion of diferent mediaion methods in diferent contexts.
The case studies will not only facilitate the further development of the analyical framework, but also allow the comparison of the theory and its applicaion in the ield. Seven countries will be covered: Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, China, Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The speciic sites, at least two in each country, will be selected based on to-be-determined criteria (e.g., diversity of the conlict, the use of mediaion). The work will be divided into two phases, with the irst phase conducted in Thailand and Indonesia, staring in June 2012. The second phase will cover the other ive countries staring in October 2012.
How can you support us?
Although the research aims to be comprehensive, there is undoubtedly room for improvement. In this regard, we would invite your criical feedback, informaion, and any suggesions you may have with respect to:
The work we are proposing, paricularly on the material and methods of the research •
The work you have done on conlict management, paricularly on conlict mediaion in Asia. This will also feed into •
the development of a conlict management bibliography and a database of conlict mediators, both of which will be posted to the RECOFTC website (htp://www.recotc.org) in the near future.
Any paricular conlict that you know of and/or mediate that may feed into the selecion of the case studies •
Any queries and feedback can be addressed to Dr. David Griten (Program Oicer, Forest Policy & Governance) at RECOFTC – The Center for People and Forests via Email: david.griten@recotc.org. For further informaion on our work on forest conlicts, please visit htp://www.recotc.org/site/Forest-Conlict.
