ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, we synthesized insights presented by contributors in confronting the challenges faced in the process of enhancing adaptiveness and collaboration in natural resource governance. This chapter draws broader meanings from these insights and weaves them into a future direction, including rethinking the current, standard way of understanding and facilitating change. To start with, we recapitulate the key insights of the contributors in Box 10.1. Moving forward through adaptive collaborative approaches
Influence established regime of mainstream institutions and actors (Chapter 4), such as through creating national coalitions with advocacy groups and media (Chapter 7).
Empower local people to monitor political actors (Chapter 3) through empowerment training (Chapter 6), training and visits (Chapter 5) and ongoing assistance in reflections and deliberation (Chapter 7).
Recognize gender differences in learning and participation in the adaptive learning processes (Chapter 5).
Create a network of local communities and facilitate horizontal learning among them and then enable the network to effectively interact with the policy regime (Chapter 5).
Adopt an iterative strategy (Chapter 3).
Create supportive senior management for field level processes (Chapter 5), and ignore anti-ACA instructions of management (Chapter 3).
Adopt a two-pronged strategy of research and action (Chapters 3 and 8), including opportunistic use of research methods (Chapter 3) and snap-shot studies before and after PAR (Chapters 3, 6 and 7).
Balance multiple and conflicting expectations of actors (Chapter 3).
Establish and communicate plausible connections between ACA processes and outcomes (Chapter 8).
Strengthen capacity to integrate research into practice and communicate across the innovation pathways (Chapters 3 through 8).
Strengthen processes of self-evaluation (Chapter 3).
Be more political (Chapters 6 and 7).
Commit to longer-term action, learning and change (Chapters 3 through 8).
Provide some financial subsidies for adaptive learning and experimentation (Chapter 5).
Discuss and clarify any suspicions and past legacies of development projects to prepare the ground for a genuinely learning based approach (Chapter 6 and 7).
Identify specific management issues and constitute specific task groups for conducting participatory action research to understand and resolve the problems and realize new possibilities (Chapters 6 and 7).
Once lessons and evidence are generated at the local level, bring those to higher levels of policy making (Chapters 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8).
Link learning processes (usually involving cycles of visioning, planning, implementing, monitoring, review and reflections) with specific economic opportunities (Chapter 6) or commonly perceived issues of governance such as exclusion (Chapter 7).
